“Yes. When the servant told me you were out, she said I could see Mrs. Rayner. I did not want to disturb her, knowing that she has the reputation of being an invalid. But she insisted.”
“Wait one moment,” said I, as he took my hand. “Are you quite sure, Mr. Carruthers, that the robbery took place last night?”
Before I uttered the last words, his eyes suddenly left my face, and were fixed on some object behind me.
I turned, and saw in the doorway Mrs. Rayner, paler and more impassive than ever, and Sarah. All the doors at the Alders opened noiselessly, and they had overheard me. And, as I looked at Sarah’s face, my heart beat faster with fear and with suspicion become certainty, for I knew that I was on the right track.
CHAPTER XXII.
In his astonishment at Mrs. Rayner’s ghostlike entrance and appearance, Mr. Carruthers had not paid much attention to the end of my question, and I determined to try to get another opportunity of putting it to him. He expressed his sorrow to Mrs. Rayner at having caused her the trouble of receiving him when she was evidently suffering, and said that he had ventured to call to tell Miss Christie about a great robbery which had taken place in the house she had so recently visited, Denham Court. Nothing but physical suffering could have explained the impassive stolidity with which she listened, her great gray eyes staring straight in front of her, to the account of the robbery. She made no comment until it was over; then she turned to him and asked, with a faint expression of relief—
“Then nobody was hurt?”
“Oh, no, there was no collision at all! They vanished like spirits, leaving no trace.”
“I am very sorry they were not caught. My husband has been in town since Tuesday morning, and I am nervous while he is away,” said she, like one repeating a lesson.
All this time Sarah stood by her, smelling-bottle in hand, as if prepared for her mistress to faint. Yet to my eyes Mrs. Rayner did not look worse than usual.