'O, no, there is nothing wrong; only Mrs. Griswold has been sending a message on business to a friend of Mr. Griswold's, and it is better, until we are sure that Mr. Griswold is all right, that she should not see the answer. Will you therefore, Mrs. Jenkins, undertake, if this telegram should come, to have it sent at once to me at the Fifth-avenue Hotel? You need not be alarmed at undertaking the responsibility--the giving the message to one to whom it is not addressed. I can give you my word of honour for that, and you will know why almost as soon as I do. I cannot tell you more just now, because I do not know more.'
'I will have the message sent, sir,' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'Up to what hour shall you expect it?'
'I mean to remain at the hotel all day--at least until it comes,' said Thornton Carey. 'There is an almost absolute certainty that it will come.'
'There will be no difficulty about it, sir,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'but may I ask you if we are to be as particular about letters as about telegrams and newspapers?'
'Certainly,' said Thornton Carey; 'my injunctions refer to every kind of communication which could possibly reach Mrs. Griswold between this time and my next visit.'
'I don't see how we are to manage that, sir,' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'She doesn't mind about newspapers, and she does not expect any telegrams from any part of the States; but she will be looking out for English letters in the morning--they ought to be in--and it won't be possible, I am afraid, to keep her quiet then, to prevent her coming downstairs, or to hide the letters from her, if they come. What are we to do in that case?'
'It will not matter about English letters,' he replied. 'Any she could get tomorrow morning must have been written before the accident which is reported, so you need not trouble about that; besides, I will be here almost as soon as the mail can be delivered.'
He received an earnest assurance from the two women that all his requests should be scrupulously observed, and he left the house feeling that, as far as human precaution could be taken towards securing her from a premature shock, Helen was safe, at all events, for a few hours.
Mrs. Jenkins and Annette retired to the waiting-room of the hall, and earnestly discussed the strange directions which they had just received. As a matter of course, they immediately seized on the morning paper of that day; for it had not escaped Mrs. Jenkins's characteristic acuteness that there was a decided inconsistency between Thornton Carey's statement that the news which he apprehended reaching Mrs. Griswold had come in private telegram, and his question as to whether any newspapers had been taken to her room that day. 'Depend upon it,' said she to Justine, 'whatever it is, there is some hint of it in the dailies for to-day. Let us have a look.'
The papers lay, as they had done on the previous day, on the table in the waiting-room; the two women turned them over eagerly, but found nothing which they could suppose to have reference to the mysterious rumour to which Thornton Carey had vaguely alluded--the murder at Liverpool was still the leading theme.