“Well, Doctor—I’ll say good night now—and thank you very much,” she said, extending her hand to the Doctor, who bowed over it silently. “Don’t keep this young lady up too late; she looks tired.” She flashed a look at Dale who stood staring out at the night.
“I’ll only smoke a cigarette,” promised the Doctor. Once again his voice had a note of plea in it. “You won’t change your mind?” he asked anew.
Miss Van Gorder’s smile was obdurate. “I have a great deal of mind,” she said. “It takes a long time to change it.”
Then, having exercised her feminine privilege of the last word, she sailed out of the room, still smiling, and closed the door behind her.
The Doctor seemed a little nettled by her abrupt departure.
“It may be mind,” he said, turning back toward Dale, “but forgive me if I say I think it seems more like foolhardy stubbornness!”
Dale turned away from the window. “Then you think there is really danger?”
The Doctor’s eyes were grave.
“Well—those letters—” he dropped the letter on the table. “They mean something. Here you are—isolated the village two miles away—and enough shrubbery round the place to hide a dozen assassins—”
If his manner had been in the slightest degree melodramatic, Dale would have found the ominous sentences more easy to discount. But this calm, intent statement of fact was a chill touch at her heart. And yet—