'I'm free to confess, my dear Miss Broad; by the way, may I call you Letty?'

'No; you may not.'

'Thank you; you are so sweet. As I was about to remark, my dear--Letty'--the other winced, but was still--'I'm free to confess that I think it not improbable that something has happened to Mr Holland.'

'You know that something has happened?'

'I don't know--I surmise. I put two and two together, thus:--To begin with, I don't think that you were the only person who egged him on to felony.'

Miss Broad again was speechless. She remembered Mr Holland's tale of his encounter with Miss Casata.

'There was a preciseness about his proceedings which set me thinking at the time, and has kept me thinking ever since. I'm pretty shrewd, you know. Now, I happen to be aware that a certain person of my acquaintance has been on too good terms with Mr Horace Burton. You have heard of Mr Horace Burton? I thought so. Such a nice young man!

Now, however, this certain person is on the worst terms with Mr Horace Burton. For sufficient reasons, I a.s.sure you. She has been evolving fantastic schemes of vengeance on the deceitful wretch; she's just a little cracked, you know. To ruin Mr Horace Burton by a.s.sisting Guy Holland to deprive him of his fortune would be just the kind of notion which would commend itself to her. I fancy that that's exactly what she did do. Didn't she, my dear?'

Miss Broad was breathing a little hard. The other's keen intuition startled her.

'It was I who told him to take what was his own.'

'Yes, I know; but the first suggestion did not come from you. However, so long as we understand each other, that's the point. To proceed--Mr Horace Burton would be cautious that this certain person's sweetness had turned to gall, and also that she was wishful to pay him out in his own coin. He might even have a notion of the form that payment was to take, having learned it from the certain person's own lips. If so, you may be quite sure that he or his friends saw Guy Holland enter my premises, if n.o.body else did. They saw him come out. They were to the full as anxious to obtain possession of that ruby as ever he could be.

So they took it from him.'

'Took it from him--with violence?'

'Do you think they could take it from him without violence--that he would hand it over practically upon request? That's not like Guy; not the Guy I knew. He'd fight for it tooth and nail himself against a regiment.'

'Do you think then they hurt him?'

'It looks as if they did something to him. He never went home. There must have been some reason why he didn't. There is at least a possibility that it was because he couldn't.'

'Do you think they--killed him?'

'Ah, now you ask too much. I should say certainly not. It would be unintentionally if they did. That would be too big a price even for Mr Horace Burton to pay. If they attacked him in fair fight, I should say that he killed someone before they did him; and that when they did it was because they had to. But the possibility is that they never let him have a chance; that they stole on him unawares, and had him at their mercy before he knew that danger threatened.'

'Miss Bewicke, you are so clever--so much cleverer than I--'

'My dear!'

'Come up to town with me and help me look for him, and go with me to the police, and--'

'Set all London by the ears? I know. We'll do it; but here comes lunch. You sit down to lunch with me, and we'll talk things over while we lunch. You see how far talking things over has already brought us; and after lunch we'll go to town, as you suggest, and find out what's happened to Guy Holland, and where he is, or we'll know the reason why. But if you won't lunch with me, then nothing remains but to wish you good day, and, so far as I'm concerned, there'll be an end of the matter. I'll have nothing to do with a person who won't eat my bread and salt.'

So the ladies lunched together. Although Miss Broad declared that she could not swallow a morsel, Miss Bewicke induced her to dispose of several. Indeed, she handled her with so much skill that by the time the meal was through--it was not a long one--one would have thought that they really were on decent terms with one another, though Miss Broad was still a trifle scratchy. But then her nerves were out of order, and when a lady's nerves are out of order, she is apt, occasionally, to stray from those well-defined paths which etiquette and good breeding require her to tread; in short, she does not know what she is doing, or what anybody else is doing either, which Miss Bewicke quite understood, so that her guest's eccentricities, apparently, simply amused her.

And the two young ladies went up together in the same compartment to London to look for Mr Holland, and to call down, if necessary, vengeance on his enemies and those who had despitefully used him.

CHAPTER XIII

VISITORS FOR MISS CASATA

Miss Casata had a razor in her hand--an open razor. She examined its edge.

'It is very sharp. Oh, yes, how sharp! One cut; it will all be over.

Will it be over with one cut--that is it--or shall I have to hack, and hack, and hack? That would not be agreeable.'

She stood in front of a looking-gla.s.s, regarding her own reflection.

'I am not bad looking; no, I am not. I have a certain attractiveness, which is my own. To use the razor would be to make a mess. I should be a horrible sight. Would he care? He would not see me. If he did, he would laugh, I know. He has what he calls a taste for the horrible. It would amuse him to behold me all covered with blood.'

She turned her attention to some articles which were on a table.

'Here is a revolver. The six barrels are all loaded. It would not need them all to blow out my brains--that is, if I have any to blow. Here is a bottle of hydrocyanic acid. What lies I had to tell to get it; what tricks I had to play! There is enough in this little bottle to kill the whole street. I have, therefore, the keys of death close to my hand--painless, instant death. Three roads to eternal sleep, and I stand so much in need of rest. Yet I hesitate to use them. It is very funny. Is it because I am going mad--I did not use to be infirm of purpose--I wonder?'

She handled, one after another, the three objects--the razor, the revolver, the little bottle--as if endeavouring to make a selection.

'I am too optimistic. There is my fault--I always hope. It is an error. I have always had in my life such evil fortune that, when happiness came, I should have known it would not endure--that the night would be blacker because the sun once shone; that for me, henceforward, it would be always night. I was a fool; so happy I forgot, so I pay for it. Well, I will take my fate into my own hands and make an ending when I choose. I should have liked to see the little one--my little one.' A softness came into the voice of which one might hardly have thought it capable. 'To have held it in my arms; to press it to my breast; to touch its lips with mine. I should, indeed, have liked to be a mother. Yet better not; it might have been like its father. That would have been the worst of all. Which is it to be--steel? lead? a little drink? Why is it I cannot decide? What's that?'

She had Miss Bewicke's dainty drawing-room to herself. An incongruous object she seemed in it, she and her gruesome playthings. A sound appeared to have caught her ear. She put her right hand behind her back; in it, the three a.s.sistants of death. Moving to a door which was on the opposite side of the room, turning the handle softly, she pa.s.sed half-way through it, then stood and listened.

'Quite still, yet. The noise did not come from there. There was a noise. Ah!'

The interjection was in response to a rat-tat-tat on the knocker. The room was illuminated by a dozen electric lights. Disconnecting one after the other, she allowed but a single one to remain alight.

Comparatively, the apartment was in darkness.

'That's not Ellen's knock, nor Jane's; she is not already back again.

Besides, she also does not knock like that. Who is it?'

The knocking came again--slightly, more insistently than before.

'If it is some bothering visitors, they will have a short answer, I promise them. When I do not open, why do they not take a hint and go?

I am not to be disturbed when I am making my arrangements to remain undisturbed for ever.'

The knocking was repeated for a third time.

'So, they persist! Well, I will show them. They shall see.'

Cramming her trio of treasures into the pocket of her dress, where one would have supposed them to be in uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, juxtaposition, she strode to the door, intent on scarifying the presumptuous caller. When, however, she perceived who stood without, surprise for the moment made her irresolute.

The visitor was Mr Horace Burton, at whom Miss Casata stared, as if he were the very last person she had expected to see--which, probably, as a matter of fact, he was. Mr Burton, on the other hand, bestowed on her his blandest smile. He sauntered past her as if he had not the slightest doubt in the world that he would be regarded as a welcome guest.

'Hollo, Lou! come to pay you a visit.'

His tone was light and airy, in striking contrast to her demeanour, which was about as tragic as it could be.

'Go! Do you hear me, go, before you are sorry, and I am sorry, too!'