She nodded, most unusual tears in her eyes. Lola was breaking under the strain, and nobody knew it better than the hawk-faced man who watched her as she passed into her flat.
CHAPTER XXVIII
MURDER
THE stone which woke Ella Bennett was aimed with such force that the pane cracked. She slipped quickly from bed and pulled aside the curtains. There had been a thunderstorm in the night, and the skies were so grey and heavy, and the light so bad, that she could only distinguish the shape of the man that stood under her window. John Bennett heard her go from her room and came to his door.
“Is it Maitland?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said.
He frowned.
“I can’t understand these visits,” he said. “Do you think he’s mad?”
She shook her head. After the precipitate flight of the old man on his last visit, she had not expected that he would come again, and guessed that only some matter of the greatest urgency would bring him. She heard her father moving about his room as she went through the darkened dining-room into the passage which opened directly on to the garden.
“Is that you, miss?” quavered a voice in the darkness.