“I understand. Well, they’re not likely to come back, but I suppose you’ll leave some one to look after the place. I shall be here first thing to-morrow morning, but I’ve rather a lot to do now. Can you arrange for some one to take these ladies home? I don’t like them to wander about unprotected. George, I want you.” As I followed him into the ruins of his private office, he asked me if Sonia had mentioned where she was going that afternoon. “I imagine, to The Sanctuary,” I answered. “She had tickets for a private view, but I heard her say it was too dark to do anything except go to bed.” “And the best place too. Will you get hold of the other telephone and tell her to bar the door and put the shutters up in the library? All the ground-floor rooms without shutters must be locked on the outside. She’s not to go to the door on any pretext; and there must be no lights in any window. If I want to get in, I’ll use the fire-escape; so she must leave the nursery-window open. Tell her—without frightening her, if possible—that I’m asking the police to draft some additional men into the neighbourhood . . .” “You think this gang has gone back?,” I interrupted. This was the first time that I had engaged in any adventure with O’Rane; and I began to appreciate some of his qualities of leadership. Always knowing what he wanted, he made his followers want it with equal intensity; fearless himself, he subdued fear in others. I felt that he would stand back to back with me against an army corps; and it was only natural that I should wish to stand back to back with him. “It’s more than likely. They’re out for blood now . . . thanks to Sonia’s damned folly in sending them here when I told her I shouldn’t be near the place. I should want somebody’s blood myself if I’d had a trick like that played on me.” I sent O’Rane’s message in his own words, not caring greatly whether I frightened Sonia so long as she obeyed to the letter. Then I telephoned to Seymour Street to give a similar warning. I would not speak to Barbara for fear she should try to argue; but I instructed Robson to put the house in preparation for a siege. Griffiths had honoured me with one call; in his mind I was intimately associated with O’Rane; I did not want him to call a second time until I had prepared a suitable reception for him. “Tell her ladyship that there’s a certain amount of rioting,” I said, “and it is my urgent wish that she shall not go out of doors. Mr. O’Rane’s office has been damaged, though—fortunately—no one has been injured. I’m going with him to his house in Westminster, just to see that everything’s all right there. Then I shall come straight home.” As I finished speaking, O’Rane came into the room and asked if I had sent his message. “Then I needn’t keep you, old man,” he added. “It was good of you to see me through. One’s sometimes extraordinarily helpless without one’s eyes.” “I’m coming back with you,” I said. “Why?”