But after that I saw nothing until an hour later, when the butler closed the window carefully and bolted it, and then one by one the lights in the lower portion of the fine mansion disappeared and those upstairs were lit. Two windows, evidently the double windows of a corner-room opposite me, were lit brilliantly behind a green holland blind, but half an hour later they also were extinguished.
I glanced at my watch. It was then half-past eleven, and the house was in total darkness. Yet I still waited, wondering vaguely if Tramu were still in the vicinity.
I found an old tree-stump, and sitting upon it, waited in watchful patience, wondering if the agent of French police would make his appearance. Suddenly, however, a bright stream of light, evidently from an electric torch, shot from one of the upstairs windows, and continued for some seconds. Then it was shut off again, only to be renewed about a minute later.
It was a signal, and could be seen from the high road!
My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, and I moved cautiously across the lawn to such a position that I could see any one leaving or approaching the house by the drive.
Again I waited for fully twenty minutes, when a slight movement caused me to turn, and I saw the figure of a woman hurrying along the side of the lawn in the shadow of the belt of firs. At first I was puzzled as to who it might be, but presently, when she was compelled to pass out of the shadow into the grey light cast by the clouded moon, I saw that it was the woman who called herself Olliffe. She wore a dark dress with a dark shawl thrown over her head.
In her eager hurry she had not noticed my presence as I stood there in the shadow; therefore, when she had passed out into the misty park with its dark clump of trees, I quickly followed with noiseless tread over the dewy grass.
She had evidently signalled to somebody, unknown to her husband!
Straight across the wide grass-lands I followed until she gained a spot where a stile gave entrance to a dark wood on the opposite side of the park. There she halted, and I was only just in time to draw back in the shadow and hide myself.
I watched, and a few minutes later I was startled at hearing that peculiar whistle of Shaw’s, and next moment he emerged from the wood and joined her.