“It was; but it may be the possession of some one else by now. Bother the horse, though. I say, Payne, I want to talk to you.”
“One minute, old chap. Here, Jafta—Jafta,” he called out to his boy. “Go and catch that horse again. Look sharp—run like the devil. If you bring him back within a quarter of an hour I’ll give you a shilling.”
Away went Jafta, and Payne, glad of the momentary delay, returned to Claverton sorely perplexed. He had sent for him, indeed, but didn’t know what the deuce to say to him now that he had come. It was more within a woman’s province, he thought; and there and then his spouse came to the rescue, taking the affair into her own hands.
“Come inside, Mr Claverton,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.” And then, when they were alone, she told him everything that had happened, from the day they had first seen Truscott until the moment of their going out that afternoon just before his arrival.
He listened quietly. A deadly resolve was shaping itself within his heart.
“What sort of a man is this Truscott—I mean what sort of a looking man?” he asked.
She described him, and the listener immediately recognised the portrait. The whole scheme was clear to him now. There was no question of money at the bottom of this man’s hostility towards him. Either the mulatto was lying when he had told him this, or, more probably, the other had given such a reason in order to conceal the real one. No. It was to rob him of Lilian that his would-be assassin was plotting. He was wise, indeed, to hire the bravo’s steel in the shape of Sharkey—for he might have been sure that only death would part him from Lilian. Ralph Truscott, look to yourself now. It is no woman, weak in the very helplessness of her love, with whom you have to deal this time. You have, indeed, cause to meditate.
“He’s gone to the front, has he?” continued Claverton. “Whereabouts? Do you know?”
Annie Payne looked at him with a troubled air. She knew well her interlocutor’s determination and daring, and she saw breakers ahead.
“But it will be all right now that you are back again,” she ventured. She greatly feared otherwise; still, one must hope for the best.