"What is all this?" he said. "Another party arrived?"
"No, sir; the party is leaving. Rather, it is left already; and the
gentlemen bade me have the baggage ready here. They would send for it
later, they told me."
This was unusually voluble from this man. Robin looked at him quickly,
and away again.
"What party?" he said.
"The gentlemen you were with this two nights past, sir," said the
landlord keenly.
Robin was aware of a feeling as if a finger had been laid on his heart;
but not a muscle of his face moved.
"Indeed!" he said. "They told me nothing of it."
Then he moved on easily, feeling the landlord's eyes in every inch of
his back, and went leisurely upstairs.
He reached his room, bolted the door softly behind him, and sat down.
His heart was going now like a hammer. Then he opened the packet; an
enclosure fell out of it, also sealed, but without direction of any
kind. Then he saw that the sheet in which the packet had come was itself
covered with writing, rather large and sprawling, as if written in
haste. He put the packet aside, and then lifted the paper to read it.
* * * * *
When he had finished, he sat quite still. The room looked to him misty
and unreal; the paper crackled in his shaking fingers, and a drop of
sweat ran suddenly into the corner of his dry lips. Then he read the
paper again. It ran as follows:
"It is all found out, we think. I find myself watched at every point,
and I can get no speech with B.
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