ait for the
blow to fall. She was too high-strung, too much in love with life. She
must either strike first in self-defence--and, in such case, strike at
what?--or remove beyond the range of the enemy's malice. Lanyard was
confident she would choose the latter course.

But confidence was not knowledge....

He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower
storey to the second. Here all the windows were of the type called
french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze
railings. Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for
such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions,
provided he stood upon one of those balconies. Nor did he count it a
difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the
front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded
of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between
each tier. These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could
hardly ask for better footholds. A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet
to the balcony: one should be able to make that within two minutes,
granted freedom from interruption. The rub was there; the quarter
seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since
Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed,
not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort
had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned
automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one
dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky
showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful
watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin.

Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences....

Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point
of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with
consideration of steps to follow--he checked and fell still farther
back into the shadow. Something was happening in the house across the
way.

A man had opened the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate.
There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of
metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions
had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the
accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred by the gate.

Following a little wait, i