"Do you agree?"
"You bet I do. I know just the man. It's settled, then. We shoot Adair!"
II
At six o'clock in the evening, Hector sat in his room, awaiting the hour of the meeting.
Though the week intervening since his recovery had done much for him, he was still pitifully thin and weak. His clothes sagged on him and his face was deathly. Only the determination to see the matter through personally kept him up. The Lieutenant-Governor and all his friends marvelled at his resolution.
He was quite calm.
Blythe came in.
"Please, sir," he said gloomily, "there's a woman wants to see you, sir. All in a hurry, she is—out o' breath. Matter o' life an' death, she says. Queer lookin', sir, queer."
"Never mind. Show her in."
The woman was queer. She was in the late forties. Her once beautiful hair had been dyed to hide the grey. She had been very pretty in her time, but was now flabby, unhealthy and inclined to fatness. And she was hopelessly painted and pencilled. She wore a heavy fur coat. Hector had seen many of her kind—women of the streets.