"A criminal genius, as we have often said when we talked of The Spider. I must say that Professor Gail, although he admired her talents, was staggered when he found out from the papers that she was the renowned Spider. I believe he had a fit. However, he has now made up endless romantic stories about her, and actually got an engagement with his wife on the strength of having known her. It's an ill wind which blows no one any good."
"If Frances Hest had lived and could have escaped hanging and imprisonment, Colonel, she would have been engaged at a music-hall to appear at a salary of hundreds a week. This age likes romantic criminality."
"I think Miss Hest's criminality was prosaic in the extreme," said the Colonel very drily. "She couldn't earn money honestly and therefore took the left-handed path. All her philanthropy was a sham, and I really believe that she had the Bolly Dam built less to supply the villages with water than to protect herself from arrest."
"But the human lives----"
"Pooh! She thought nothing of human life, and was a kind of female Napoleon in that way. She wrung Dimsdale's neck as though he had been a chicken the moment she found her personal safety was in danger. Had he not torn off her mask and thus recognised her she would have spared him. A marvellously clever woman: she quite took me in. I never expected to find The Spider in her, and had not Maunders escaped to betray her I would have believed that the non-existing Francis was the blackguard. And more, she would have got ten thousand pounds from Ida, and perhaps in America would have started on a new career of roguery. However, I recovered the signed document and the cheque from the body, so nothing was said about that matter in the papers. I was glad for my wife's sake."
"What became of Bahadur?"
"He bolted from the country and has never been heard of. His uncle, Hokar, as you know, died after the explosion."
"And Mrs. Bedge?"
"She buried all memory of Constantine with his bones, but I think she regards him as a martyr who was led astray by Miss Hest. Yet from the lips of The Spider herself I learned that it was Maunders who induced that very clever lady to become a criminal."
"Do you think Maunders himself blackmailed his aunt?"