"I'll only smoke a cigarette," promised the Doctor. Once again his voice had a note of plea in it. "You won't change your mind?" he asked anew.
Miss Van Gorder's smile was obdurate. "I have a great deal of mind," she said. "It takes a long time to change it."
Then, having exercised her feminine privilege of the last word, she sailed out of the room, still smiling, and closed the door behind her.
The Doctor seemed a little nettled by her abrupt departure.
"It may be mind," he said, turning back toward Dale, "but forgive me if I say I think it seems more like foolhardy stubbornness!"
Dale turned away from the window. "Then you think there is really danger?"
The Doctor's eyes were grave.
"Well--those letters--" he dropped the letter on the table. "They mean something. Here you are--isolated the village two miles away--and enough shrubbery round the place to hide a dozen assassins--"
If his manner had been in the slightest degree melodramatic, Dale would have found the ominous sentences more easy to discount. But this calm, intent statement of fact was a chill touch at her heart. And yet-"But what enemies can Aunt Cornelia have?" she asked helplessly.
"Any man will tell you what I do," said the Doctor with increasing seriousness. He took a cigarette from his case and tapped it on the case to emphasize his words. "This is no place for two women, practically alone."
Dale moved away from him restlessly, to warm her hands at the fire. The Doctor gave a quick glance around the room. Then, unseen by her, he stepped noiselessly over to the table, took the matchbox there off its holder and slipped it into his pocket. It seemed a curiously useless and meaningless gesture, but his next words evinced that the action had been deliberate.
"I don't seem to be able to find any matches--" he said with assumed carelessness, fiddling with the matchbox holder.
Dale turned away from the fire. "Oh, aren't there any? I'll get you some," she said with automatic politeness, and departed to search for them.
The Doctor watched her go--saw the door close behind her. Instantly his face set into tense and wary lines. He glanced about--then ran lightly into the alcove and noiselessly unfastened the bolt on the terrace door which he had pretended to fasten after his search of the shrubbery. When Dale returned with the matches, he was back where he had been when she had left him, glancing at a magazine on the table.
He thanked her urbanely as she offered him the box. "So sorry to trouble you--but tobacco is the one drug every Doctor forbids his patients and prescribes for himself."