“I can’t tell you how that wink sort of froze me through and through. My only thought was to get out in the corridor as quick as ever I could. I got up, trying to look natural and easy. Perhaps they saw something—I don’t know—but suddenly Mrs. Vandemeyer said ‘Now,’ and flung something over my nose and mouth as I tried to scream. At the same moment I felt a terrific blow on the back of my head. …”
She shuddered. Sir James murmured something sympathetically. In a minute she resumed:
“I don’t know how long it was before I came back to consciousness. I felt very ill and sick. I was lying on a dirty bed. There was a screen round it, but I could hear two people talking in the room. Mrs. Vandemeyer was one of them. I tried to listen, but at first I couldn’t take much in. When at last I did begin to grasp what was going on—I was just terrified! I wonder I didn’t scream right out there and then.
“They hadn’t found the papers. They’d got the oilskin packet with the blanks, and they were just mad! They didn’t know whether I ’d changed the papers, or whether Danvers had been carrying a dummy message, while the real one was sent another way. They spoke of”—she closed her eyes—“torturing me to find out!