He started suddenly; the cigarette smelt pungently as it singed the carpet. Somebody was whispering his name; somebody was calling him from the stairs. Then he recognized Ralph's croaking voice.
"Tchigorsky," he muttered sleepily. "I had forgotten that Tchigorsky wanted me."
Tchigorsky was waiting. The room was pregnant with the perfume of Turkish cigarettes and coffee. Ralph handed a cup to his nephew.
"Drink that," he said. "You want something to keep you awake."
Geoffrey accepted the coffee gratefully. It had the desired effect. He felt the clouds lifting from his brain and the drowsy heaviness of limb leaving him.
Ralph shook his head. There was a strange gleam on his face.
"I stay here," he said. "You are going to be busy, but I also have much to do. Don't be concerned for me. Blind as I am, I am capable of taking care of myself. I shall have a deal to tell you in the morning."
A minute or two later and the two conspirators slipped away. It struck Geoffrey as strange that they should not leave the house in the usual way; but Tchigorsky grimly explained that he much preferred using the ivy outside Ralph's window.
"Always be on the safe side," Tchigorsky muttered. "Come along."
Geoffrey followed. Where Tchigorsky could go he felt competent to follow. They reached the ground in safety and later were in the road. The moon had gone and it was intensely dark, but Geoffrey knew the way perfectly.
"As far as the lawn," Tchigorsky replied. "It will be a good hour yet before we can venture to carry out our burglary. I can run no risks until I know that those two Asiatics are out of the way. What time is it?"
Tchigorsky muttered that the time was not quite suitable for him. He drew a watch from his pocket; there was a stifled whirr of machinery, and the repeater's rapid pulse beat twelve with the silvery chime of a quarter after the hour.
"You are wrong," he said. "You see it is between a quarter and half-past twelve. We will lie on Jessop's lawn till one o'clock and then all will be safe."
They lay there waiting for the time to pass. The minutes seemed to be weighted. "Tell me some more of your Lassa adventures," Geoffrey asked.
"Very well," Tchigorsky replied. "Where did I leave off? Ah, we had just been tortured on that awful grill. And we had been offered our lives on condition that we consented to be hopeless idiots for the rest of our days.