“The envelope! The handwriting!” Richardson faltered. “I—it was from—”
An instant’s pause. Wingrave raised his eyebrows.
“Ah!” he said. “We need not mention the lady’s name. That she should be a correspondent of yours, however, helps me to understand better several matters which have somewhat puzzled me lately. No! Don’t go, my dear sir. We must really have this affair straightened out.”
“What affair?” Richardson demanded, with a very weak attempt at bluster. “I don’t understand you—don’t understand you at all.”
Wingrave leaned a little forward in his chair. His eyebrows were drawn close together; his gaze was entirely merciless.
“You are not well this morning,” he remarked. “A little headache perhaps! Won’t you try one of these phenacetine lozenges—excellent things for a headache, I believe? Warranted, in fact, to cure all bodily ailments for ever! What! You don’t like the look of them?”
The young man cowered back in his chair. He was gripping the sides tightly with both hands, and the pallor of a ghastly fear had spread over his face.
“I—don’t know what you mean,” he faltered. “I haven’t a headache!”
Wingrave looked thoughtfully at the box between his fingers.
“If you took one of these, Mr. Richardson,” he said, “you would never have another, at any rate. Now, tell me, sir, how you came by them!”