It came inside a parcel of warm socks that arrived from my kind aunt. But the letter for me was not from her. It was in Blenkiron's large sprawling hand and the style of it was all his own. He told me that he had about finished his job. He had got his line on Chelius, who was the bird he expected, and that bird would soon wing its way southward across the mountains for the reason I knew of.
'We've got an almighty move on,' he wrote, 'and please God you're going to hustle some in the next week. It's going better than I ever hoped.' But something was still to be done. He had struck a countryman, one Clarence Donne, a journalist of Kansas City, whom he had taken into the business. Him he described as a 'crackerjack' and commended to my esteem. He was coming to St Anton, for there was a game afoot at the Pink Chalet, which he would give me news of. I was to meet him next evening at nine-fifteen at the little door in the east end of the house. 'For the love of Mike, ****,' he concluded, 'be on time and do everything Clarence tells you as if he was me. It's a mighty complex affair, but you and he have sand enough to pull through. Don't worry about your little cousin. She's safe and out of the job now.'
My first feeling was one of immense relief, especially at the last words. I read the letter a dozen times to make sure I had its meaning. A flash of suspicion crossed my mind that it might be a fake, principally because there was no mention of Peter, who had figured large in the other missives. But why should Peter be mentioned when he wasn't on in this piece? The signature convinced me. Ordinarily Blenkiron signed himself in full with a fine commercial flourish. But when I was at the Front he had got into the habit of ****** a kind of hieroglyphic of his surname to me and sticking J.S. after it in a bracket. That was how this letter was signed, and it was sure proof it was all right.
I spent that day and the next in wild spirits. Peter spotted what was on, though I did not tell him for fear of ****** him envious. Ihad to be extra kind to him, for I could see that he ached to have a hand in the business. Indeed he asked shyly if I couldn't fit him in, and I had to lie about it and say it was only another of my aimless circumnavigations of the Pink Chalet.
'Try and find something where I can help,' he pleaded. 'I'm pretty strong still, though I'm lame, and I can shoot a bit.'
I declared that he would be used in time, that Blenkiron had promised he would be used, but for the life of me I couldn't see how.
At nine o'clock on the evening appointed I was on the lake opposite the house, close in under the shore, ****** my way to the rendezvous. It was a coal-black night, for though the air was clear the stars were shining with little light, and the moon had not yet risen. With a premonition that I might be long away from food, Ihad brought some slabs of chocolate, and my pistol and torch were in my pocket. It was bitter cold, but I had ceased to mind weather, and I wore my one suit and no overcoat.
The house was like a tomb for silence. There was no crack of light anywhere, and none of those smells of smoke and food which proclaim habitation. It was an eerie job scrambling up the steep bank east of the place, to where the flat of the garden started, in a darkness so great that I had to grope my way like a blind man.
I found the little door by feeling along the edge of the building.
Then I stepped into an adjacent clump of laurels to wait on my companion. He was there before me.
'Say,' I heard a rich Middle West voice whisper, 'are you Joseph Zimmer? I'm not shouting any names, but I guess you are the guy I was told to meet here.'
'Mr Donne?' I whispered back.
'The same,'he replied. 'Shake.'
I gripped a gloved and mittened hand which drew me towards the door.
