"It is a puzzle," admitted Freddy, drawing his brows together, "but go on; you have something else to tell me."
"Rather," and Dan detailed all that had taken place from the time he received Penn's invitation to meet him in the Bakerloo Tube to the moment he arrived at his rooms again in the four-wheeler. "What do you make of it all, Freddy?" asked Halliday, when he ended and relighted his pipe. "Give me time to think," said Laurance, and rose to pace the room. For a time there was a dead silence, each man thinking his own thoughts. It was Dan who spoke first, and said what was uppermost in his mind. "Of course my hands are tied," he said dismally, "I dare not risk Lillian's life. The beasts have killed her father, and Durwin and Penn, all because they got to know too much. They may kill Lillian also and in the same mysterious way."
"But she knows nothing," said Freddy anxiously. "No. But I do, and if I speak--well, then you know what will happen. Queen Beelzebub saw that I cared little for my own life, so she is striking at me through Lillian. 'The girl he loves!' says that message. Clever woman Mrs. Jarsell; she has me on toast." "But, my dear fellow, you can't be sure that your masked demon is Mrs. Jarsell, since you did not see her face, or recognize her voice."
"I admit that the mask concealed her features, and I believe that she spoke through an artificial mouthpiece to disguise the voice. Still, there is the evidence of her possessing the perfume, which plays such a large part in the gang's doings. Also her appearance in the animated picture, which proves her to have been on the Blackheath ground."
"But Mrs. Pelgrin and her nephew declare positively that she could not have been there."
"Quite so, but Mrs. Pelgrin and her nephew may be paid to keep silence," retorted Dan in a worried tone; "then Miss Armour, if you remember, prophesied that I should have a wonderful offer made to me. If I accepted I should marry Lillian and enjoy a large fortune. Well, an offer in precisely the same words was made to me, on condition that I joined the gang." "But surely you don't believe that a paralyzed woman like Miss Armour has anything to do with this business?" questioned Laurance skeptically. Dan shrugged his shoulders. "Miss Armour is the friend of Mrs. Jarsell, whom I suspect, and certainly told my fortune as you heard. Mrs. Jarsell may have told her what to say, knowing that the prophecy would be fulfilled. I don't say that Miss Armour knows about this infernal organization, as the very idea would horrify her. But Mrs. Jarsell may use the poor woman as a tool."
"I can't believe that Miss Armour knows anything," said Freddy decidedly; "to begin with, the Society of Flies needs useful people, and an invalid like Miss Armour would be of no use."
"I admit that Miss Armour is in the dark," replied Halliday impatiently; "all the same, her prophecy, together with the perfume and the cinematograph evidence, hints at Mrs. Jarsell's complicity. Again, the false Mrs. Brown who murdered Sir Charles was stout and massive. Mrs. Jarsell is stout and massive."
"Plenty of women are stout and massive," asserted the reporter, "but you saw the false Mrs. Brown yourself. Did you recognize Mrs. Jarsell as that person?"
"No. But Mrs. Brown was so wrinkled for a fat woman that I remember thinking at the time she might be a fraud. I daresay--I am positive, in fact--that her face was made up, and while I looked at her she let down her veil--another hint that she did not wish to be examined too closely."