"He is doing nicely at this moment, thank you. You and the lady are free to go."
"Ah!"
Mathison started to turn, but stopped, fascinated by the singular change which was passing over the face of the woman in front of him. Slowly her hands reached out on each side, fingers spread; her body seemed to shrink.
"Hilda?"
CHAPTER XV
Mathison stepped aside, not only physically, but figuratively. He saw that for a little while he was to be an outsider. There was a strange tragedy here, and it was going to be threshed out immediately. The attitude of the two women was a dead reckoning that there were accounts to settle. Already they seemed to have forgotten him.
Of course he had known, or at least suspected, that these two remarkable women were sisters—twins. From the moment he had discovered that posed photograph, located The Yellow Typhoon in this very house, established the fact that Norma Farrington was acting on the stage that night, he had known.
From where he stood, ill at ease and restless, he could see the two faces. So alike that, separately, it was impossible to tell which was which or that there were two. Witness his own adventures in that hotel room. The detective had declared that two women had mounted that fire-escape because he had seen nothing but footprints. But the two together, as Mathison now saw them! The one with the white soul of her shining in her face; the other—a sphinx. Hilda—he would never think of her as Norma again—a white page with a beautiful poem written thereon; the other, a page with a cryptogram. A miracle; he could call it nothing else; a physical allegory, the good fairy and the bad. The forest pool that slaked your thirst; the lying mirage of the desert. And yet the mirage was no less glorious to the eye than the honest pool. He knew he would never again mistake the one for the other.