“Grievous bodily harm,” he mouthed. “That’s what it is. They’ve deposited dangerous goods. They’ve done it maliciously. They intended me to be burned. They hoped I should be burned—burned to hell. It’s a diabolical plot. They’re poisoners. First they poison the mind and then the body. They’re proffering robbery and murder, and fools all over England are buying their treacherous wares. Three hundred guineas I’ve paid to have my mind diseased and my body burned to hell.”
Here a bell stammered.
That no one heard it but Blanche is not surprising.
Without a moment’s hesitation she slipped unobserved from the hall into a vestibule, and a moment later she was on the steps.
As the chauffeur opened the door of a landaulet—
“Take me to London,” she gasped, “and put me down at the Ritz.”
In another minute she was flying up the broad highway.
An hour had gone by, and Titus was sitting at his table with a frown on his face.
The man looked tired, as well he might. In the last ten days he had ciphered one hundred and eighty rooms. During this period he had surveyed none at all. The sowing season was past: it was time to garner the harvest—high time. The boom was cracking.