The last words came with a scream that might have been heard all over the house. Tchigorsky closed the door and proceeded rapidly to explain. But it was not the full explanation he had given to the others. There was time enough for that.
Vera was too bewildered to ask questions. At a sign from Geoffrey she slipped from the room. Then she recollected that she had come downstairs on an errand of mercy. She promised to get a cup of tea for the woman whom she still knew as Mrs. May. She procured the tea from the drawing room and, in a dazed kind of state made her way up the stairs again.
Mrs. May was sitting up in bed. There was a pink spot on either cheek and her dark eyes were blazing.
"I hope nothing is wrong," she said. "It might have been my fancy, but it seemed to me that I heard you call Tchigorsky's name at the top of your voice."
The suggestion was made with a fervent earnestness that the woman could not repress. But Vera did not notice it.
"I did," she said. "I walked into the library, hearing voices there, and in a chair Dr. Tchigorsky was seated. No wonder that I cried out. It was a fearful shock. And when he began to talk I could not believe the evidence of my senses."
"Then who was it that was buried?"
The woman asked the question mechanically. She knew perfectly well what the reply would be; she knew that she had been discovered at last, and that the murder of Voski had been turned to good purpose by Tchigorsky. And she knew now who her new ally, Ben Heer, really was.
"Dr. Voski," Vera explained. "I have been hearing all about Lassa and a certain Princess Zara, who seems to be a dreadful wretch. But I fear that I am exciting you. And you haven't drunk your tea."