“Oh! nothing actually against her that I know of. A beautiful woman living alone, and much admired. ... Rumour has it that she’s a widow, and again has it that she is not. I’ve got beyond the age when a man troubles to find out.”
“What causes you to imagine she is in with the other side?” inquired his hearer, a shade of impatience in his tone.
“The boy—”
“Hayhurst?”
“Yes. Hayhurst declares that she induced him to go home with her, that she pumped him, and then signalled to a man who must have been hiding on the stoep, and who sprang in through the window behind him and knocked him senseless with a blow over the head. When he came to himself he was lying in the gutter near his lodging and the papers were gone. My God!” wound up the speaker savagely, “to know that that young fool had in his possession what I’ve been months scheming to get hold of, and lets a woman Delilah him out of his prize! I could cheerfully have slain him when he brought the tale of his failure to me.”
“Lucky for him it was not to me he brought it,” the other said grimly; “I should probably have done it. You don’t reckon yourself over credulous, I suppose, in accepting his tale as it stands?”
“No. I might have questioned it; but it seems probable enough in face of the fact that the fellow who holds the papers has been paying marked attention to Mrs Lawless for some time, and she certainly does not discourage him. Cape Town couples their names together, I believe. One can credit anything about a woman who will listen to the suit of a rogue like that,—a damned swindler, with a reputation for being bigamously married already in another country!”
“His name?” the man with the scar asked sharply, leaning half-way across the table.
“Van Bleit.”
Grit sat up.