"Yes. That was one of the reasons which caused me to exercise discretion. I felt that we should soon meet again, M'sieur Vidal," she added. "They say that I shall be discharged from here in about a week."

"I hope so," I declared earnestly. "You had a very narrow escape from those fiends."

"I was quite unsuspicious when I went there," she said. "That house has been our meeting-place for the past eighteen months or so. Sometimes we met at Gregory's flat in Amsterdam, and sometimes at the tenantless house in Spring Grove, or at one which has been to let at Cricklewood, and also at a house in West Hampstead."

"The spot 'where the three C's meet' at Ealing is the usual rendezvous, I suppose?"

"Yes, the place is easy of access, quiet, and entirely unsuspicious. I have met my uncle there sometimes when in London, and sometimes Gregory or the others. The conference usually took place there, and then we went together in a taxi to one or other of the meeting-places which Gregory had established."

"As soon as you have quite recovered we will lay a trap and secure the whole gang," I whispered confidently.

"Ah! I fear that will not be easy," she exclaimed, slowly shaking her head. "We shall be too well watched."

"And we can watch also," I remarked. "I know that from to-day I shall be kept under close supervision because they will fear me more than ever. But I shall manage to evade them, never fear. As soon as you leave hospital we must join forces and exterminate this gang of assassins."

She drew a long breath, bent her fair brows and looked straight across at the pale-green wall. I could see that she was not at all confident of escape. She knew how clever, designing and unscrupulous was the old man Gregory; how cheaply her uncle, Jules Jeanjean, held human life.

"Where is Gregory now, I wonder?" I exclaimed.