Chapter 25
GABRIELLA’S MISSIONSomething woke him. Lifting his head from his folded arms he gazed around, unsure where he was till he spotted the ugly cuckoo clock on the facing wall in the kitchen. If the little bird had sprung from its dirty wooden house, he had slept through the obnoxious noise. It was one o'clock in the morning. Hours earlier, he must have wandered in and dozed off at the table, after vainly waiting for Gabriella. And there it was again, he realized, that sound, a soft secretive rap on the front door. In seconds he was there, squinting through the peep hole. “Thank goodness,” he muttered. The pacing, the fingernail chewing, that anxious waiting was over. Gabriella, in a black cape and woolen cap against the cold, stood the other side, looking tired, as though she had d
