Here was a sudden and unexpected dénouement, a terribly dramatic end to our troubles if we could but clear up the horrible uncertainty remaining.
What had become of my sister and little Ralph?
While the servants of the hotel attended to the stricken man, Basil Annesley plied the detectives with eager questions. He urged them to tell all they knew; it should be made worth their while; they no longer owed allegiance to their late employer. He entreated them to withhold nothing. Where and how had Lord Blackadder met Henriette? What had he done with her? Where was she now?
We could get nothing out of these men; they refused to answer our questions from sheer mulish obstinacy, as we thought at first, but we saw at length that they did not understand us. What were we driving at? They assured us they had seen no lady, nor had the unfortunate peer accosted any one, or interfered with any one on his way between the two hotels. He had come straight from the Villa Shereef to the Hotel Atlas, racing down at a run, pausing nowhere, addressing no one on the road.
If not Lord Blackadder, what then? What could have happened to Henriette? Tangier was a wild place enough, but who would interfere with an English woman in broad daylight accompanied by her servant, by an escort, her attendant Moorish guide? Full of anxiety, Basil called for a horse, and was about to ride off to institute a hue and cry, when my sister appeared in person upon the scene.
"Getting anxious about me?" she asked, with careless, almost childish gaiety. "I am awfully late, but I have had such an extraordinary adventure. Why, how serious you look! Not on my account, surely?"
I took her aside, and in a few words told her of the terrible catastrophe that had just occurred, and for a time she was silent and seemed quite overcome.
"It's too shocking, of course, to happen in this awful way. But really, I cannot be very sorry except for one thing—that now he will never know."
"Know what, Henriette? Have you taken leave of your senses?"
"Know that I have discovered the whole plot of which I was the victim. My dear, I have found Susan Bruel, and she has made a full confession. They were bribed to go away, and they have been here hiding in Tangier."