"I am glad you were not. My one feeling of thankfulness was that you had escaped being hurt in any way. I didn't mind dying so long as you were all right, my darling, although I much prefer being alive and here. Lillian, my dear, don't cry; it's all over, weeks ago."
"I--I--I can't--can't help it," sobbed the girl, clinging to him; "it is all so dreadful. When Mr. Laurance came that day with the police and said you were at The Grange, I thought I should have died."
"There, there," Dan soothed her, as he would have soothed a fretful child; "it is all over and done with. By the way, how was Freddy so certain that I was at The Grange? He never quite explained his certainty."
"Well, dear," said Miss Moon, drying her eyes with Dan's handkerchief, "when he did not hear from you in London, he went down to Blackheath with Inspector Tenson of Hampstead. They saw the local inspector and called at Lord Curberry's house, after what Mr. Laurance told. But already a policeman had been summoned by the servants. Lord Curberry was dead of poison, and they found his confession, saying how he had taken it because he believed that his connection with the Society of Flies was found out. Then the servants explained how Queen Beelzebub had come in an aeroplane----"
"They did not call her Queen Beelzebub--the servants I mean," said Dan, who had heard the explanation before but was glad to hear it again told in Lillian's soft voice. "No; they did not know who she was, as she was cloaked and veiled. But they told Mr. Laurance that you had declared this veiled lady had murdered Lord Curberry--that wasn't true, you know."
"True enough in one sense," interrupted Dan, quickly, "seeing that she drove him to suicide. Well?"
"Well, then, Mr. Laurance guessed that she was Queen Beelzebub and wondered where you were. He went to the shed where you kept your aeroplane and heard that you had followed her. Those at the shed thought that it was a race." "It was," said Dan, grimly, again, "and I won."
"Mr. Laurance guessed that you had followed her all the way to Sheepeak, although he fancied, and indeed hoped, that both aeroplanes had broken down. He dreaded lest you should get into trouble at Sheepeak."
"Which I certainly did, although not quite in the way Freddy expected." Lillian laughed at the memory of his escape, and rubbed her soft face on the sleeve of his coat. "Mr. Laurance told the police all about the matter, and they wished to telegraph to Thawley, so that the police there might go over to Sheepeak. But Mr. Laurance stopped them, as he fancied you might have been taken captive by Queen Beelzebub, and that if such a move was made, she might hurt you."
"She intended to hurt me very severely. And then Freddy heard from the police about those numerous telegrams all in the same words, calling thirty people to Sheepeak. It was the similarity of the messages that made the telegraph authorities suspicious and, when the police came to ask--knowing where Queen Beelzebub lived from Freddy--they were shown the telegrams."