"Fourteen hours from door to door," he remarked with satisfaction. "I didn't believe she could do it. By the way, I hear the funeral is arranged for the day after to-morrow. Is that right?"
"I believe so."
"I needn't have broken my neck to get here, after all. Still, there may be something I can do for the family, as I hear Clifford is on the sick list…. Is Sartorius still at the house?"
She replied that he was and, bidding a hasty good-bye, got into her waiting taxi. Once alone, the thoughts stirred up by the young man's unexpected appearance on the scene buzzed turbulently inside her brain. She could not get over the surprise of seeing him, nor could she help remarking how remarkably jovial and carefree he appeared, in spite of his lowered voice and studious air of reverence when speaking of the dead man. Moreover, there seemed to her something almost indecent in the haste with which he had arrived on the spot. It had less the appearance of solicitude for the sorrowing relatives than the eagerness of a vulture swooping down upon a good square meal it had long been hoping for. Had Chalmers really telephoned him? Somehow she could not believe it, apart from Holliday's very slight hesitation before pronouncing the butler's name. Whoever it was who gave the information must have been quite confident of Sir Charles's death, had indeed timed it with extraordinary accuracy—or so it seemed to her somewhat stimulated imagination.
Another disturbing idea now occurred to her. Would Holliday by any chance mention to the doctor that he had run into her coming out of a chemist's shop? It did not seem at all likely, and, of course, if her suspicions were wrong and she was doing the doctor a gross injustice, then the information would mean nothing at all. Still, if she was not mistaken…
"Oh, I must be mistaken!" she exclaimed vehemently in the seclusion of her taxi. "It is utterly absurd! I have made up the whole story out of whole cloth. In all that household no one but me has a thought of anything wrong. How ashamed I should be if they knew!"
Still, when on arriving at the house Chalmers opened the door for her, she could not resist saying to him:
"Chalmers, I ran into Captain Holliday in the town—such a surprise. He's hurried back to be here for Sir Charles's funeral. He says you telephoned him yesterday that Sir Charles was sinking very fast."
There was no mistaking the blank look on the old butler's face.
"Me telephone the Captain, miss? Oh, you must have misunderstood him!
I never even knew where he was stopping in Paris, miss."