“Yes. Take it, Clive,” said Dinah slowly, but evidently rapidly recovering her strength. “It is the message I received from you that day.”
“I sent no message,” he cried, as he hastily read the stained slip, and caught the words “come”—“meet me”—some figures “P.M.,” and his name in full—“Clive Reed.”
“A forgery!” he cried wildly, as the truth flashed upon him. “There is no postal mark upon it. I did not send this lie.”
“No?” said Dinah faintly, as the look of despair grew more marked in her eyes. “I have thought since that I had been deceived, but I felt that I would sooner die than you should not know the truth.” Then she turned pale and shrank to her father’s side, as a spasm of rage shot through Clive Reed.
“Jessop again!” he whispered hoarsely to the Doctor; and his fingers crooked, and he held out his hands as if about to spring at another’s throat. Then he reeled, but recovered himself with an exultant cry, for a voice came loudly to their ears from round the buttress toward the mine.
“Curse you! I will. The police shall stop that.”
“No; you don’t get away,” cried another voice; and Dinah turned of a sickly white. “Stop, you! and let’s have it out, or I’ll heave you down below. Blast you! I tell you she was my lass—before you and your cursed brother came in the way. Mine, I tell you.—Ah! just in time!”
Sturgess uttered a savage laugh, and he stopped short facing the little group upon the shelf, and holding on by Jessop’s collar, in spite of the latter’s struggles to get free.
“Look here, all of you. This man, my servant—you are witnesses—he has threatened my life. I go in fear of him. I’ll have him in charge. I go in fear, I tell you.”
“Yes, so much,” cried Sturgess, with a mocking laugh, “that he was off down again to the cottage to see pretty little Miss Gurdon here, only I stopped him, for I’ve had enough of it. Master or no, he don’t go poaching on my estate. I’d sooner break his cursed neck.”