summon Saunders, perhaps. Then the door behind him opened and shut, a rather timid voice said, “Captain Cameron!” and turning, he beheld Miss Isobel Cochran with a lighted candle in her hand.
“I came, sir, because I thought you would need this.” She held it out none too steadily. “Oh, sir, you are the only one right of all of us! The Prince should not bide longer; it is too dangerous.”
“So I think,” said Ewen, looking down at her gravely. “I thank you, Miss Cochran.” He took the light from her. “Could you not persuade Lady Easterhall to hasten his departure?”
“Hardly,” answered the girl regretfully. “You can see what it means to her to have the Prince under her roof. . . . If you will go along that passage, sir, you will find a window out of which you can see some way up the close. . . . Stay, I will show you, since I am here.”
She slipped along the passage in front of him, and he followed with the candlestick.
“There,” said Miss Cochran, “this window.” She unlatched it, Ewen setting down the light at some distance. He saw the girl put her head out . . . and then draw back, her hand over her mouth as though to stifle a scream. “Too late, too late already! Look, look!”
Ewen leaned out. Down the dark alley, already echoing to the quick tramp of feet, a file of soldiers were advancing two by two, an officer leading. He drew in his head.
“Go back at once and warn the Prince, madam. I will stay a moment to watch. Blow out the light, if you please; I do not want them to see me.”
Obeying him, the girl fled, while Ewen, crouching by the open window, held his breath as the heavy, hasty footsteps drew nearer and nearer, and he was looking down at last on three-cornered hats and tilted bayonets. There were fully a score of soldiers, and they were stopping at Lady Easterhall’s entrance; he saw the officer raise a lantern to make sure of the door. Waiting no longer, he ran back along the passage and pelted down the stairs. “Saunders, Saunders!”
Fortunately the old man heard him at once and emerged from some lair of his own on the ground-floor. “What’s to do, sir?”
“There are soldiers from the Castle at the door. Don’t admit them, on your life! They are after . . . ‘Mr. Murray’. Is the door stout?”
“No’ by-ordinar’ stout. Dod, they’ll be for coming in; nae doot o’ that!” For a sword-hilt, it might have been, was clamouring on the door. “If I’m no’ tae open, they’ll ding the door doun!”
“Let them,” commanded Ewen. “ ’Twill take some time to do it. And remember, you know nothing at all about her ladyship’s visitors!”
He ran up again, thanking Heaven with all his heart for the secret passage and its exit in a spot where the redcoats would never dare to show their faces—since there was a Highland post in the West Bow also.
Three minutes, perhaps, had elapsed since the first discovery and Miss Cochran’s return to the drawing-room; Ewen hoped, therefore, as he burst into that apartment, to find no one but the ladies remaining. To his dismay, however, they were all there, in a group against the wall on the right of the hearth. The writing-table had been pushed aside, Strickland was holding a candle close to a panel, and O’Sullivan seemed to be struggling with something in the carving of this. Lady Easterhall, looking incredibly old, was clinging to her great-niece, and the eyes of both were fixed agonisedly on the Irishman and his efforts. The Prince, though he too was watching O’Sullivan narrowly, appeared the most unconcerned of the five.
“Ah, Ardroy, it seems you were justified of your nervousness, then,” he observed coolly. “And the spring of the panel is unfortunately stiff. It is long, evidently,” he added in a lower tone, “since a lover left this house by that road!”
“The soldiers are at the door,” said Ewen in a stifled voice. His heart felt like hot lead within him; was all to end thus, so foolishly and so soon? The dull sound of battering came up from below.
“Let Miss Cochran try,” suggested the Prince. “I think it is rather skill than strength which is needed.” And O’Sullivan relinquished his place to the girl. He was very pale, and Strickland had obvious difficulty in keeping the candle upright.
“Isobel, Isobel, can ye no’ stir it?” exclaimed Lady Easterhall, wringing her old hands.
The girl’s slender fingers were striving with the boss of carved woodwork which concealed the spring. “O God!” she whispered, and shut her eyes. “Is there no other possible hiding-place——” Ewen was beginning in desperation when, with a loud grinding noise, the panel ran back, revealing a dark wall and the first few steps of a winding stair which plunged steeply downwards.
“Quick!” said O’Sullivan, seizing Strickland by the arm. “You first, to light the stair. Now, your Highness!” The Prince stepped through the aperture and O’Sullivan himself followed. But Ewen lingered a moment on the threshold of safety.
“Madam,” he said earnestly to the shaken old lady, “if I may advise, do not you or Miss Cochran stay a moment longer in this room! To be in your bedchambers retiring for the night, when the soldiers succeed in forcing an entrance, as I fear they will, is the best answer you can make to the charge of entertaining the Prince. Do not, I beg of you, be found here—for he has still to get clear of the house!”
“Ye’re richt,” said Lady Easterhall. The frozen terror had left her face now. “ ’Tis you hae had the wits all along, young sir! In wi’ ye! Noo, Isobel, pit tae the door—and then let’s rin for it!”
Behind Ewen came grinding and a snap, and he was left in almost complete darkness to find his way as best he could down the stair. Somewhere below he heard echoing steps and cautious voices, so the Prince and his companions were still in the house. There must, indeed, be a passage as well as a stair if one was to emerge into the West Bow right on the other side of it. For him there was no hurry; it was just as well to play rear-guard. He started leisurely to descend, feeling his way by the newel, and hoping that he would never again go through another five minutes like the last.
He had certainly not accomplished more than a dozen steps of the descent when he stopped and stiffened, his heart jumping into his throat. There had suddenly floated down from above an ominous dragging, rasping sound which he had heard too recently not to recognise. It was the panel sliding open again! Had the soldiers found it already? It seemed almost impossible.
Tugging at his sword, Ewen half leapt, half stumbled, up the dark twisting stair again, and was met by an oblong of light, barred across its lower half by the replaced writing-table. But, as he was instantly aware, the room, though still brilliantly lit—for there had been no time to extinguish the sconces—was empty, and silent save for the sounds of furious battering which came up from below through its closed door. It was clear what had happened. The spring of the secret entrance, damaged perhaps, had failed to catch, and after the hurried departure of the two ladies it had released the panel again . . . and so the first thing to attract the notice of anyone entering the room would be that yawning gap in the wall.
Ewen sprang at the sliding door and tried to push it to again, but on its smooth inner surface there was nothing by which to get sufficient purchase. Closed it must be, at whatever cost, and on whichever side of it he was left. He thrust aside the escritoire, stepped out into the room, and pressed the boss which concealed the spring. The panel obediently returned . . . to within half an inch of its place. By getting hold of a projecting line of carving with his nails, Ewen feverishly contrived to push it completely home, but was instantly aware that it would no longer engage itself securely in
