He turned to hurry from the room, and there in the doorway, where she had stood for the last half-minute, in defiance of the most stringent rule of the club, was the pretty subject of his anxiety, her sun-browned cheeks all seamed with bramble scratches, her corona of golden hair tumbling over her shoulders, her golf skirt in tatters.
"Don't look so scared, father," she said. "I'm all right. But that person has hit the correct nail about my being very mixed up in it, and you must come away at once, please. I have a lot to tell you."
Ignoring the incoherences of the inquisitive Lazarus, whom they left babbling his willingness to overlook the infraction of the rule against the admission of ladies if they would only have their say out there, father and daughter passed out of the club into the quiet and deserted street. Alive to the value of every second, Enid condensed the narrative of her experience in the grotto into a few words, but she missed no vital point, from her imprisonment by "The Bootlace Man" to her escape twenty minutes ago by the aid of her fellow-prisoner, the French onion-seller. Nor did she omit to repeat the fantastic notions held by Pierre Legros, and the final mystery of Violet Maynard's voice being heard in the garden so late at night.
In his absorption in the momentous tale, Mr. Mallory came to a halt under a street lamp, for they had intuitively turned their steps up the hill homewards. Enid saw the dawn of a great fear in the well-chiselled features she knew so well. But she would not have abstained from slang on the Judgment Day.
"What is it, dad," she said, laying a grimy paw on the sleeve of her father's dinner jacket. "Have I enabled you to spot the winner?" "This is what I make of it on a rough calculation," Mr. Mallory replied. "The Frenchman's suspicions as to Nugent taking Louise Aubin away on a steamer are, of course, all moonshine. It is Violet Maynard who is being decoyed on to the steamer, with Chermside and the murder of that miserable Jew as items in a nice little plot of Nugent's. I have had inquiries made in London lately, and I find that he was thick with that Indian prince whose name was coupled with Violet's in the society rags. I know Bhagwan Singh for an arrogant and pitiless libertine, Enid. That steamer is bound for India."
The old man and the girl stared at each other, comprehending the tragedy in all its naked horror.
"How long ago was it that you heard Miss Maynard passing through the grounds of The Hut on her way to the beach?" Mr. Mallory asked, breaking the strained silence.
"It must have been more than half an hour. I got out through the roof of the grotto almost immediately afterwards; then I went home, and, finding you out, ran down to the club as hard as I could," Enid replied. Then, glancing up at her father's stern, set face, she said abruptly——
"What time does the telephone exchange close?"
"Hours ago—at eight o'clock, and it's now nearly midnight," replied Mr. Mallory, looking at her as if she had gone daft.