For one moment Harry Vine stood bending over his victim; then uttering a hoarse sigh, he leaped over the body and fled.
Chapter Twenty.
In the Black Shadow.
Mrs Van Heldre let her work fall in her lap and gazed across at her husband.
“I suppose Harry Vine will walk home with Madelaine?” she said.
“Eh? Maddy? I’d forgotten her,” said Van Heldre laying down his pipe. “No; I’ll go up and fetch her myself.”
“Do, dear, but don’t stay.”
“Not I,” was the reply; and going out of the dining-room, where he always sat when he had his evening pipe, the merchant went into the study, where by the dim light he saw that his writing-table drawer was open.