A most unpleasant letter. Leah felt inclined to tear it up, but some instinct told her that Katinka Aksakoff was a persistent girl, with much obstinacy in her character. If no reply came she would probably hasten to Firmingham for an interview, and Lady Jim did not care about having the second honeymoon of herself and her restored husband spoilt by the scene which would surely take place. After destroying several sheets of note-paper she produced a concise reply, saying as little as ever she could. Nevertheless, she was forced to say much she would have preferred left unsaid. Captain Strange, said Lady Jim's reply, declared that Demetrius had so conspired. But he had been set free and had disappeared. What he said might be true, or might not. Nothing could be known for certain unless Lord James returned, and up to the date of the letter he had not put in an appearance. Demetrius certainly had come to Paris--not to see the writer, but to interview M. Aksakoff about a possible pardon. At the Henri Trois Hotel the doctor had been seized with a fit, and a Dr. Helfmann had taken charge of him. "Since then," wrote Lady Jim, "I have not seen him. However, I enclose a letter which he sent me on the day I left Paris. It would seem that he has gone to Russia."
"And I hope Katinka will follow him there," said Leah, after adding a few Judas words of endearment. "Aksakoff might keep her on his Volga estate. She'll only make mischief if she comes to England. I'll warn her father of that;" and she did, for M. Aksakoff received a letter, which hinted that his daughter might prove to be a possible fire-brand. And so the matter, for the time being, ended.
But Jim had not yet arrived. Seven days passed, and the eighth night since the buccaneer's release closed in. Leah felt the strain terribly, and hardly ate or slept. Hilda did what she could to cheer her up, but, not knowing the whole truth, could do very little. Lady Jim declined to take drugs, as her last experience of these had shown her how they aged people, though that might have been her fancy. All she could do, and did do, was to keep a tight rein on her emotions, and beyond looking pale, and a trifle haggard, no one could have told that she was in any way disturbed. Joan was a great comfort to her in those days of strain, and so was Lionel, with his prophecies that all would yet be well. But Leah had no one to whom she could tell the whole shocking truth, and it was desperately trying to a woman, whose nervous system was almost wrecked, to hold her tongue. These still waters were running very deep.
She found a certain relief in motion, and while Hilda wept and wailed that the bodies of her dear husband and his father had never been cast ashore for Christian burial, Leah's motor-car tore round the country through storm and sunshine. She would not even take a chauffeur, but engineered the machine herself. Providence, or the fetish that stood to her in place of it, watched over her escapades. She met with no accident, not even the most trivial, although in her reckless driving she did her best to reduce the car to match-wood. Like a witch on a broomstick she flew round the country, frantic and insistent, as though she sought the enjoyment of some wizard Sabbath. The motor flung mile after mile behind, with a buzz and a hum, and the speed of a destroyer buffeting a rough sea. Leah, with her hand on the levers, swooped down narrow lanes, spun furiously along the King's highway, crashed through scared villages, and raced the setting sun to the verge of the astonished lands. It was the extreme danger of these flights which delighted and strengthened her; and if she had a large bill to pay for breaking every known law in the county policemen's note-books, it was easy for the Duchess of Pentland to pay for such frolics. The thrill, the dash, the knowledge of power, the governance of a flying bomb-shell--these things were worth double, treble, quadruple the money. She was inebriated with danger, exalted by the constant nearness of death, and, like a she-Satan, defiantly self-sufficient, scorned both God and man. Of woman, needless to say, she took no account whatsoever.
Then came one memorable night, riotously wild with wind and rain. With gleaming lamps, at top speed, facing the wrath of conflicting elements battling under a stormy sky, she drove her machine roaring up the avenue. A quick turn of the hand and she stayed it, fuming and whirring like a live thing, before the porch. Contrary to custom, the door was open. Against the light she saw Lionel, and in a moment guessed the inevitable. Leaving the chauffeur to attend to the monster, this Mrs. Frankenstein sprang up the steps and dragged Lionel under the glare of the electric lamp. A look into his face redoubled the beat of her heart. There, sure enough, she saw what she expected to see.
"Take me to him," she breathed, still retaining her grip on his arm.
"But are you quite prepared? He is in the library, and----"
Leah flung the curate away so forcibly that he staggered against the wall. She was out of the hall, she was at the library door, she was in the library itself, and all in two quick-drawn breaths.
"Hulloa, Leah," said a well-known voice, in a well-known manner.
She did not answer, but stared with a bloodless face, possessed entirely by the devil of hysteria. Then she dropped, without a cry or a word. Like a blood-mare, she had held out to the winning-post, and thus paid the price of victory.