"Impossible!" replied Link quickly. "I have kept Mrs. Clear's name out of the papers. It is known that Ferruci is dead, and that Mrs. Vrain is likely to be arrested in connection with her supposed husband's murder. But the fact of Mrs. Clear putting the real Vrain into the asylum is not known, nor, indeed, anything about the woman. If Wrent thinks she'll tell tales, he'll meet her in their own hunting grounds in Geneva Square, to make his terms. Hitherto he has not replied to her requests for money, but now he'll think she is driven into a corner, and will fix her up once and for all."
"Do you think that Wrent is Vrain?"
"Good Lord! no!" replied Link, staring. "What put that into your head?"
Lucian immediately told about the supposed connection between Vrain and Wrent, but, suppressing that it was Lydia's or Ferruci's idea, based his supposition on the fact of the resemblance between the two men. Link heard the theory with scorn, and scouted the idea that the two men could be one and the same.
"I've seen Vrain," said he. "The old man is as mad as a March hare and as silly as a child. He's in his dotage, and could not possibly carry out such a plan. But we can easily learn the truth."
"From whom?" asked Lucian.
"Ah, Mr. Denzil, you are not so clever as you think yourself," scoffed Link. "Why, from Mrs. Clear, to be sure. She visited at Jersey Street, and saw Wrent, and as Vrain was then with her in the character of her husband, she'll be able to tell us if they are two men or one person."
"You are right, Link. I never thought of that."
"He! he! Then I can still teach you something," replied Link, in high good humour at having for once scored off the too clever barrister, and forthwith went off to see Mrs. Clear.
How this interview with that lady sped, or what she told him, he refused to reveal to Lucian; but its result was that a cypher appeared in the agony column of the Daily Telegraph, calling upon Wrent to meet her in the Silent House in Pimlico, under the penalty of her telling the police all she knew if he did not come. In the same issue of the paper in which this message appeared there was a paragraph stating that Mrs. Vrain had been arrested at Dover.