By the evening of the following day, everything was going
smoothly. The doctor came and departed several times, and sent
medicine, and seemed fairly optimistic as to the issue of the
illness. An old woman had been induced to come in and cook and
clean. Miss Spencer was kept out of sight on the attic floor,
pending some decision as to what to do with her. And no one
outside the house had asked any questions. The inhabitants of that
particular street must have been accustomed to strange behaviour
on the part of their neighbours, unaccountable appearances and
disappearances, strange flittings and arrivals. This strong-minded
and active trio - Racksole, Nella, and Prince Aribert - might have
been the lawful and accustomed tenants of the house, for any
outward evidence to the contrary.
On the afternoon of the third day Prince Eugen was distinctly and
seriously worse. Nella had sat up with him the previous night and
throughout the day.
Her father had spent the morning at the hotel, and Prince Aribert
had kept watch. The two men were never absent from the house at
the same time, and one of them always did duty as sentinel at
night. On this afternoon Prince Aribert and Nella sat together in
the patient's bedroom. The doctor had just left. Theodore Racksole
was downstairs reading the New York Herald. The Prince and
Nella were near the window, which looked on to the back-garden.
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