“You all right, Rex?” asked Simon, stepping forward.
The Duke jerked him back.
“I’m fine,” came a reassuring voice from the lesser darkness by the window. “Thank God,” said the Duke, releasing his grip on Simon’s arm. “For a moment I feared it might be one of them. Mind that infernal hole.”
“Great stuff you gave ’em just now,” Rex went on. “I got across without so much as a farewell wave.”
“Listen,” said the Duke. “I propose that we should try the garden at the back — the stairs are free.”
“That’s O.K. But where’ll we make for when we get there?”
“To Marie Lou. Did she get horses? Are they at her cottage?”
“She did not. Her hick farmer friends had been given the wire about us; they wouldn’t sell.”
A sudden spurt of bullets on the ceiling made Rex duck his head.
“No matter,” De Richleau went on quickly, “we can only go one at a time, and her cottage is the only place that we all know; it is the only place to rendezvous.”