mind; I know that they were meant for my protection and for the good of my country. You see”—he pointed—”the broadcasting corporation has equipped me with a microphone. To-night I speak in the safety of my own study.”
“You have followed my instructions closely?”
Nayland Smith was watching the priest with almost feverish intentness.
“In every particular. You may take it”—he smiled—”that I have not been poisoned or tampered with in any way! My address for to-night I wrote with my own hand at that desk. None other has touched it.”
“You have included the facts which I gave you—and the figures?”
“Everything! And I am happy to have you with me, Sir Denis; it gives me an added sense of security. At any moment now, the radio announcer will be here. I trust that you will stay?”
Nayland Smith did not reply. He was listening—listening keenly to a distant sound. Although he was barely aware of the fact, his gaze was set upon a reproduction of Carpaccio’s St. Jerome which hung upon the plastered wall above a crowded bookcase.
And now the abbot was listening, too. Dim cries came from far below; shouted orders. . . .
A drone of aeroplane propellers drew rapidly nearer. Smith crossed to the window. A searchlight was sweeping the sky. A moment he watched, then turned, acted—and his actions were extraordinary.
Seizing the abbot bodily he hurled him in the direction of the door! Then, leaping forward, he threw the door open, extending a muscular arm, and dragged him out. On the landing, Dom Patrick staggered; Smith grasped his shoulder.
“Down!” he shouted, “down the stairs!”
But now the priest had appreciated the urgency of the case. Temporarily shaken by this swift danger, as a man of courage he quickly recovered himself. On the landing below:
“Lie flat!” cried Smith, “we must trust to luck!”
The noise of an aeroplane engine grew so loud that one could only assume the pilot deliberately to be steering for the tower. Came a volley of rifle fire. . . .
They were prone on the marble-paved floor when a deafening explosion shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn as an earthquake might have shaken it. Excited cries followed, crashing of fallen debris; an acrid smell reached their nostrils: the drone of propellers died away.
Abbot Donegal rose to his knees.
“Wait!” cried Smith breathlessly. “Not yet!”
The air was pervaded by a smell resembling iodine, he distrusted it, and stood there staring upward towards the top landing. The crown of the elevator shaft opposite the abbot’s door was wrecked. He could detect no sign of fire. The abbot, head bowed, gave silent thanks.
“Smith!” came huskily, “Smith!”
An increasing clatter of footsteps arose from the stairs below, and presently, pale, breathless, Mark Hepburn appeared.
“All right, Hepburn!” said Nayland Smith. “No casualties!”
Hepburn leaned heavily against a handrail for a moment;
he had outrun them all.
“Thank God for that!” he panted. “It was an aerial torpedo—we saw them launch it!”
“The plane?”
“Will almost certainly be driven down.”
“What d’you make of this queer smell?”
Mark Hepburn sniffed suspiciously, and then:
“Oxygen,” he replied. “Liquid ozone electrically discharged, maybe. For some reason” (he continued to breathe heavily) “the Doctor wanted to avoid fire. . . .”
Cautiously they mounted the stairs and looked into the dark wreckage which had been Dom Patrick’s study. There were great holes in the roof through which one could see the stars, and two entire walls of the room had disappeared. All lights had gone out. Nayland Smith stared as a hand touched his shoulder.
He turned. Abbot Donegal stood beside him, pointing.
“Look!” he said.
One corner of the study remained unscathed by the explosion. In it stood the microphone installed that day, and from the plaster wall above, St. Jerome looked down undisturbed. . . .
“A sign, Sir Denis! God in His wisdom has ordained that I speak to-night!”
Lola Dumas lay curled up on a cushioned settee; she wore a rest gown and slippers, but no stockings. And in the dimly lighted room the curves of her slender, creamy legs created highlights too startling in their contrast against the blue velvet to have pleased a portrait painter. Stacks of crumpled newspapers lay upon the carpet beside her. Her elbows buried in the cushions, chin resting in cupped hands, her sombre eyes speculative, almost menacing.
On the front page of the journal which crowned the litter a large photograph of Lola appeared. It appeared in nearly all the others as well. She was the most talked-about woman in the United States. Drawings of the dresses to be worn by her bridesmaids had already been published in the fashion papers. It was to be a Louis XIII wedding: twenty tiny pages dressed as Black Musketeers, with Lola herself wearing the famous diamond broach upon the recovery of which Dumas’ greatest romance is based. An archbishop would perform the ceremony, and not less
