“But can’t I see her—just for a moment?”
Sir Isaac’s malignity had softened a little at the prospect of victory. “Absolutely impossible,” he said. “Everything disturbs her, every tiny thing. You——You’d be certain to.”
Lady Beach-Mandarin looked at her companion and it was manifest that she was at the end of her resources. Miss Garradice after the fashion of highly strung spinsters suddenly felt disappointed in her leader. It wasn’t, her silence intimated, for her to offer suggestions.
The ladies were defeated. When at last that stiff interval ended their dresses rustled doorward, and Sir Isaac broke out into the civilities of a victor....
It was only when they were a mile away from Black Strand that fluent speech returned to Lady Beach-Mandarin. “The little—Crippen,” she said. “He’s got her locked up in some cellar.... Horrid little face he has! He looked like a rat at bay.”
“I think perhaps if we’d done differently,” said Miss Garradice in a tone of critical irresponsibility.
“I’ll write to her. That’s what I’ll do,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin contemplating her next step. “I’m really—concerned. And didn’t you feel—something sinister. That butler-man’s expression—a kind of round horror.”
That very evening she told it all—it was almost the trial trip of the story—to Mr. Brumley....
Sir Isaac watched their departure furtively from the study window and then ran out to the garden. He went right through into the pine woods beyond and presently, far away up the slopes, he saw his wife loitering down towards him, a gracious white tallness touched by a ray of sunlight—and without a suspicion of how nearly rescue had come to her.