A shrill wind was coming up from the sea and whistling about the house. I could hear the hammering of the workmen in the pavilion as well as the music of the orchestra practising their scores.
A few minutes before eleven Price returned, carrying one of the smaller of the travelling-trunks I had taken to Cairo. I noticed that it bore no name and no initials.
"It's all right," she said. "They've gone off, every mother's son and daughter of them—all except the housekeeper, and I've caught her out, the cat!"
That lynx-eyed person had begun to suspect. She had seen Tommy harnessing his horse and had not been satisfied with his explanation—that he was taking tomatoes to Blackwater to be sent off by the Liverpool steamer.
So to watch events, without seeming to watch them, the housekeeper (when the other servants had gone off to the rehearsal) had stolen upstairs to her room in the West tower overlooking the back courtyard.
But Price had been more than a match for her. Creeping up behind, she had locked the door of the top landing, and now the "little cat" might scream her head off through the window, and (over the noises of the wind and the workmen) it would be only like "tom" shrieking on the tiles.
"We must be quick, though," said Price, tumbling into my travelling-trunk as many of my clothes as it would hold.
When it was full and locked and corded she said:
"Wait," and stepped out on the landing to listen.
After a moment she returned saying: