"Do as I bid you! It's the only way out. Let them think you heard a noise,
got up to investigate, found me here, rifling the safe--"
"No," she insisted--"no! Why should I save myself at your expense?--betray
you--my father--!"
"Then give me the obedience of a daughter ... or let Victor succeed in
branding you a thief, the daughter of a thief!"
He stilled the protest she would have uttered by placing fingers over her
lips.
"Listen!"
In the corridor an angry rumour of voices, alarmed calls and cries, with
thumps and scuffles of hasty feet, in the bedchamber the shrieks persisting
without the least hint of failing: as a damned soul might bawl upon its bed
of coals ...
"Sofia, I implore you!"
Still she hesitated.
"But you--?"
"Never fear for me, remember that I am of the Secret Service: two minutes
after I see the inside of the nearest police station, I shall be free--and
happy in the assurance that your name is without stain. Then Karslake will
come for you, bring you to me ... Now!"
Lanyard caught the girl's two wrists together and, throwing himself bodily
backward across the desk, carried her hands to his throat.
With a simultaneous crash the door was flung back to the wall. Led by
Victor Vassilyevski a dozen men, guests and servants, in various stages of
dishabille, streamed into the room.
XX
THE DEVIL TO PAY
When it was all over, when the gravelled drive no longer crunched to wheels
that bore away the man Nogam to answer for his misdeeds, when the household
had quieted down and the most indefatigable sensation-monger had wearied of
singing the praises of the Princess Sofia and, tossing off a final
whiskey-and-soda, had paddled sleepily back to bed, lights burned on
brightly in two parts only of Frampton Court, in the bedchambers tenanted
respectively by Prince Victor Vassilyevski and his reputed daughter.
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