Chapter XXVII: Strange Precautions

While Grail was shaving, at that two-minute gait which, once acquired at West Point, is never forgotten, a sudden suggestion came to him, and he laid down his razor to draft out on a telegraph blank a composition, which seemed, from the way he frowned and bit his pen over it, to require careful consideration.

Finishing it at last, he slipped it into a sealed envelope, and when he had completed his dressing, carried it and the note from Appleby over to the post-telegraph office.

The Appleby note he laid on the table under a paper weight.

“Sergeant,” he said to the man in charge, “I want you to keep your eye on that paper, and if it disappears, instantly transmit this to the address within.” He handed over the sealed envelope.

The man stared at him as though he thought he had suddenly gone crazy. “If the paper disappears?” he gasped.

“Exactly.” Grail looked at him sternly. “And let there be no mistake in carrying out instructions, please. As you may surmise, there are strange things going on, and much may depend on you to-night. I repeat, if the paper on the desk disappears, you are to send without delay the dispatch in that sealed envelope.”

Then he started for the waiting taxi; but the operator halted him at the door.

“Oh, by the way, captain,” he called, “Miss Vedant was trying to get you several times this afternoon.” A bit confused by Grail’s impressive manner and the peculiar instructions given him, he did not think to add that the call had come by wireless.

“Miss Vedant?” The adjutant swung around, his hand on the knob. “Did she leave any message for me?”

“No, sir. Merely said she would call again.”

“Very well. It makes no difference now. I shall probably see her in person in ten or fifteen minutes.”

Whirling uptown with Cato in the cab, he kept pondering over the matter, wondering why Meredith had been so anxious to communicate with him, and trying to piece out an answer from the facts at his disposal.

Then he suddenly slapped his knee, as what seemed to be a solution broke upon him.

“Cato,” he exclaimed, “do you remember what Simmons was saying when he was interrupted by that pistol shot, and the arrival of the Japs?”

“Something about a family reunion between the colonel and his daughter, wasn’t it, sir?”

“Yes; the exact words, as I remember, were that it would be quite a family reunion to have father and daughter under----” Then he stopped. “Cato, what he was about to say was ‘under one roof.’ Don’t you see it, man? Colonel Vedant was taken from the hut last night to the home of Otto Schilder.”

Cato looked puzzled. “Is Mr. Schilder one of the gang, too?” he demanded.

“No.” He hesitated, then added, in a lower tone: “But, as I have known from the beginning, a member of Schilder’s household has long been on terms of clandestine friendship with this man Dabney, or Rezonoff. She has, in fact, been his chief aid in all this matter.”

“She?” Cato glanced at him.

“Yes; Mrs. Schilder. There is no longer any use in trying to protect her, for I gather from the circumstances that her husband already knows all. To my mind, that is the explanation of his summoning Appleby to his office this afternoon, and of the conference of officers at the house to-night. He probably wants to arrange some plan to hush the affair up with as little scandal as possible.

“I should not be surprised, too,” he went on, “to learn that it was Miss Vedant who discovered the secret of the colonel’s presence in the house; for she is quick-witted enough to have outgeneraled even so crafty a schemer as that woman. Yes, that must be it,” he repeated; “she found it out and tried to communicate with me, but, failing in that, finally turned to Schilder.”

“Well, we’ll know for certain in a minute now,” said Cato, as the cab halted under the porte-cochère; “for here we are.”

The door swung open to them, as they climbed the steps.

“If you please, sir,” the man who admitted them said to Grail, “Miss Vedant wishes to see you at once. Will you follow me? She is in madame’s boudoir.” Then, with less ceremony, he directed Sergeant Cato to accompany another man to a room belowstairs.

Up a softly carpeted flight Grail was led by his guide, and along the hall; then the man, drawing aside heavy portières, disclosed a room suffused with a dim, rosy light.

Grail took a step forward, but halted as he saw no one there. Before he could turn, however, he was dealt a stunning blow over the head. He reeled, threw up his hands to clutch vainly at the air, then felt himself falling, and knew no more.