“All right!” I was willing enough to carry my curiosity down the hill. “I’ll go down. You’d better have the butler stay in here, and plant the chauffeur inside the front door. Better give them guns if you have any. Is there a raincoat I can borrow? I brought only a light overcoat with me.”
Brophy found a yellow slicker that fit me. I put it on, stowed gun and flashlight conveniently under it, and found my hat while Brophy was getting and loading an automatic pistol for himself and a rifle for Oliver, the mulatto chauffeur.
Hendrixson and the princess followed me downstairs. At the door I found she wasn’t exactly following me—she was going with me.
“But, Sonya!” the old man protested.
“I’m not going to be foolish, though I’d like to,” she promised him. “But I’m going back to my Irinia Androvana, who will perhaps have the samovar watered by now.”
“That’s a sensible girl!” Hendrixson said, and let us out into the rain and the wind.
It wasn’t weather to talk in. In silence we turned downhill between two rows of hedging, with the storm driving at our backs. At the first break in the hedge I stopped, nodding toward the black blot a house made.
“That is your—”
Her laugh cut me short. She caught my arm and began to urge me down the road again.
“I only told Mr. Hendrixson that so he would not worry,” she explained. “You do not think I am not going down to see the sights.”