"No doubt. But they will not come here. No one saw you enter this house. If your friends are clever enough to trace you to this place they will find nothing. We have chemists who can convert your dead body into nothing more tangible than gas. You will vanish into thin air. We have arranged all that."
"You are a fiend."
"I am Madame Death-in-Life. You know why I am called so? No? Because those in authority live on my sufferance. I have but to lift a finger and they die. Monsieur Rouge, whom you have seen, is something more than a chemist. He invents explosives. He designs bombs."
Mallow thought of the explosion in Paris, when the wife and child of Emile Durand were killed by the lifting of Madame's finger, and he drew comfort from the recollection. A man with such wrongs would surely rescue him, even at the eleventh hour.
The thought gave him courage to listen to the woman.
"Well, whether you kill me or not the fifty thousand pounds are gone," said he, rather spitefully. "All your schemes have come to nothing."
"All our schemes are not ended," said Mrs. Arne, rising. "I see your friend Lord Aldean has not yet got back the money."
"How do you know that?"
"I know that he is in Florence trying to force my nephew into giving back the money which is ours."
"Your nephew! The false Carson!"