“Wait,” said Jane. “Just wait. Let him hunt. He might not find it. He’s bound to start with our room when he returns upstairs, but he’ll rush, because he knows I’m going back there.” She paused, tilting her head to favor her left ear, listening. “I pushed the gramophone under the bed. He’s likely to look there first, and as it’s in its case, he might think it’s the cipher machine and just grab it and run.”

The house was silent around us. The only noise came from outside.

“Hush,” Jane repeated. “All we need do is wait.”

Once more, I had that false and foolish feeling that with her I was in the safest place in the house.

Suddenly, and irrelevantly, I remembered that the meter had run out and our gas fire must have cut off by now.

We heard the German airman come upstairs, and Jane was right—he went straight back to Room Number Five. We heard him close the door. But there was still so much muffled banging and shouting outside that we couldn’t tell what he was doing.

Jane whispered urgently, “I must sit. I suppose there’s only the throne. Help me—” It was easier lowering her than before, and we didn’t have to fuss with her clothes. “Do you think you could open the window, Louisa?”

The narrow glass in the arrow slit was solid—there wasn’t any latch. “It doesn’t open,” I said.

“You’d better break it, then.”

I stared at her.

“Why?”

“I think we should have some fresh air.”

“But—!”

“Use my stick,” she told me.

“Whatever will Mrs. Campbell say!”

“We need fresh air,” Jane insisted, and then confessed softly, “I forgot to turn off the gas tap when the fire went out.”

“The gas doesn’t come back on until you put in another shilling,” I told her.

“But I did,” she admitted. “I put in a shilling just before I asked that young man to help me out here.”

“Did you light the fire again?”

“No,” she whispered. “I couldn’t reach. I didn’t want to ask him to do it.…”

“But that means he’s been in there with the gas leaking full on for half an hour!”

We stared at each other.

“Break the window,” Jane told me.

And I did.

I took long breaths of fresh air before I set out to do the awful things that only I could do.