[CHAPTER XIII.]
WHAT BECAME OF LITIZKI.
Clara retired before her uncle returned, and when at last he appeared, it was only to pack his bag and hurry away to catch the midnight train for New York.
"I may be gone a week," he told Louise, "and I may get back in two days. Telegraph me at the Travelers' Hotel, if I am wanted for anything."
Mr. Pembroke's departure was a great disappointment to Clara. She reproached herself that she had not made an opportunity to tell him about her conversation with Poubalov and Litizki; it was his right to know everything that could possibly bear upon the case, and could she have told him, she would have besought him to advise her.
She was now in a bewildering maze of doubts and uncertainties. Billings had lied to her; she was almost as sure of that as if she had already proved it; but at what part of his story the falsehood began she could only guess. There was no doubt that Ivan had taken Billings' carriage. Did he give the driver orders to go to the Park Square Station? Did Billings drive to the station? The latter question she could answer with some degree of satisfaction by inquiry of the man O'Brien, and that seemed the first thing to do; but what then?
Poubalov had called to say something, and had not only gone away without saying it, but had gone in such wise as to leave no reasonable doubt that he dared not face the driver of the closed carriage. Was it not an inevitable inference that Billings had been hired by the Russian? It was with evident difficulty that Billings had stumbled through the story as it was. Would not Poubalov, recognizing the driver's mental inferiority, have argued that if they were suddenly brought face to face, Billings would have betrayed their complicity by at least a start?
And Litizki, what had become of him? It was not to be thought of that he had abandoned the case. Poubalov had called at his shop during the day, unquestionably with some ulterior design. Could anything be more reasonable than to suppose that in some way the spy had frustrated the attempt of Litizki to help her?