“It’s more than likely. They’re out for blood now . . . thanks to Sonia’s damned folly in sending them here when I told her I shouldn’t be near the place. I should want somebody’s blood myself if I’d had a trick like that played on me.”
I sent O’Rane’s message in his own words, not caring greatly whether I frightened Sonia so long as she obeyed to the letter. Then I telephoned to Seymour Street to give a similar warning. I would not speak to Barbara for fear she should try to argue; but I instructed Robson to put the house in preparation for a siege. Griffiths had honoured me with one call; in his mind I was intimately associated with O’Rane; I did not want him to call a second time until I had prepared a suitable reception for him.
“Tell her ladyship that there’s a certain amount of rioting,” I said, “and it is my urgent wish that she shall not go out of doors. Mr. O’Rane’s office has been damaged, though—fortunately—no one has been injured. I’m going with him to his house in Westminster, just to see that everything’s all right there. Then I shall come straight home.”
As I finished speaking, O’Rane came into the room and asked if I had sent his message.
“Then I needn’t keep you, old man,” he added. “It was good of you to see me through. One’s sometimes extraordinarily helpless without one’s eyes.”
“I’m coming back with you,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because . . . one is sometimes extraordinarily helpless without one’s eyes.”
“But this isn’t your show. Sonia set the match to the fire; and I must put it out.”
“I may be able to lend a hand.”