Lutchester stood for a short time in an absorbed and sombre silence. In the deep blue twilight his face seemed to have fallen into sterner lines. Without a doubt he was disturbed. Pamela looked at him anxiously.
"Nothing definite, only for the last few hours I have felt that things here are reaching a crisis. There is something going on around us, something which seems to fill Fischer and his friends with confidence, something which I don't quite understand, and which it is my business to understand. That is really what is worrying me."
She nodded sympathetically and glanced around for a moment.
"Let me tell you something," she whispered. "This evening my uncle came into my room just before dinner. There is a little safe built in the wall for jewellery. He begged for the loan of it. His library safe, he said, was out of order. I couldn't see what he put in, but when he had closed the door he stood looking at it for a moment curiously. I made some jesting remark about its being a treasure chest, but he answered me seriously. 'You are going to sleep to-night, Pamela,' he said, 'within a few yards of a dozen or so of written words which will change the world's history.'"
Lutchester was listening intently. There was a prolonged pause.
She glanced at the little Yale key which hung from her bracelet.
"Nothing! I was just wondering how I should be able to sleep through the night without opening the safe."
"But surely your uncle didn't give you the key!"
"I don't suppose he knows I have such a thing," she replied. "He has a master-key himself to all the safes, which he used. This is one the housekeeper gave me as soon as I arrived."
"Tell me," he inquired, "is that your house--the next one to this?"
"That's the old Hastings' house," she assented. "They are all family mansions along here."
"It looks an easy place to burgle," he remarked.
"I should think it would be," she admitted. "There are any quantity of downstair windows. We don't have burglaries in Washington, though --certainly not this side of the city."
A little bevy of young people had found their way into the gardens. Lutchester waited until they had passed out of earshot before he spoke again.
"I have reason to believe," he continued, "that in the course of their negotiations Fischer has deposited with your uncle a certain autograph letter, of which we have already spoken, making definite proposals to America if she will change her attitude on the neutrality question."