“I understand,” he said, “that he is absent from home, temporarily absent. I have no doubt——”
Miss Blow rose from her chair and took up her umbrella.
“You’re like all the rest,” she said. “You are as bad as the hotel-keeper and his friend. You are simply trying to put me off with lies. Good morning.”
“Wait a moment. Please do not hurry away. I am not like all the rest, really. I assure you I’m,—compared to Patsy Devlin, for instance,—I’m a miserably inefficient liar. Please sit down again.”
Miss Blow allowed herself to be persuaded.
“Tell me the truth,” she said; “and then find his body.”
“The truth,” said Lord Manton, “is painful—very painful. But it’s not so bad as that. Dr. O’Grady has been for some time past in a position of considerable pecuniary embarrassment.”
“He was up to his neck in debt,” said Miss Blow bluntly. “I know that. That’s what brought me here. And now I find he’s gone.”
There was just a hint of a break in her voice as she spoke the last words. Lord Manton thought that tears were at last imminent. He felt more at his ease, and ventured to take her hand in his and to stroke it gently. She snatched it from him.