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The sound came to an end, and Durkin was assuring himself that it could now be neither Pobloff nor the valet, when a second sound sent a tingle of apprehension through his frame. It was the blue spurt of a match that suddenly cut the blackness before him. The fool he was striking a light! Durkin crouched lower, and watched the flame as it grew on the darkness.
Pobloff, obviously, had never moved from where he stood. Frank slowly groped to the wall of her room, and felt with blind and exploring hands until she came to her bureau. Then sounded the clink of nickel as the lamp was withdrawn from its case and the dry rattle of German safety-matches.
It was then that Durkin sprang forward. Pobloff saw him advance. He had only time to reverse his hold on the little gun-metal revolver and fire two shots. The first shot went wide, tearing deep into the plastered wall. The second cut through the flap of his assailant's coat-pocket, just over the left hip, scattering little flecks of woollen cloth about. But there was no time for a third shot.
And she watched him anxiously as he and his packet of documents went down the dangling hemp rope, reached the stone paving of the little court, and disappeared in the square of light framed by the bake-shop window. Then she turned back into the room, startled by a weak and wavering groan from Pobloff.
It was some time before she could speak. "Pobloff," she begged, in her dangerous contralto, a contralto like the medium register of a clarinet, "Pobloff, let me adjure you to be careful. Your coming here has caused political disturbances. The aunt of the prince hates music as much as he adores it. She is no party to your invitation. So be on your guard.
So this middle-aged David left his nest to go harp for a Saul yet in his adolescence. What his duties were to be Pobloff had not the slightest idea. He had received no special instructions; a member of the royal household bore him the official mandate and a purse fat enough to soothe his wife's feelings. Pobloff slept. He usually snored; but this evening he was too fatigued.
Outside, through the night, sounded muffled street noises, and the boom and hiss and spurt of fireworks. The two peering faces turned slowly, until their range of vision had swept the entire room. Then they paused, for motionless against the west wall, between the closet door and the corner, stood Pobloff. His arms were folded, and he was laughing a little.
She did not gasp nor did she shrink away, for with her the situation was not so novel as her antagonist might have imagined. Indeed, as she gazed back at him, motionless, she saw the look of increasing wonder which crept, almost involuntarily, over his white, lean, Slavic-looking face. Frances Durkin knew it was Pobloff.
"A year ago last March he was arrested in Jamaica, by the British authorities, for securing secret photographs of the Port Royal fortifications. They court-martialed one of the non-commissioned officers for helping him get an admission to the fortress, but the officer shot himself, and Pobloff had the plates spirited away, so the case fell through.
It began with the chanting, childish refrain, a Lithuanian fairy-tale of old, and as its naïve, drowsy, lulling measures the voices of wicked, wooing sirens sang and sank in recurrent rhythms, Pobloff heard this time he was sure the regular reverberation of distant footsteps.
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