“It has been signalled, my lady; a few minutes now.”
Mrs. Vansittart gave a quick sigh of relief, and turned on her heel. She had long been unable to remain quietly in one place. She saw Dorothy coming up the slope to the platform. At last matters were taking a turn for the better—except, indeed, Dorothy's face, which was set and white.
“I have found out something,” she said at once, and speaking quickly but steadily. “It is for to-night, between half-past nine and ten.”
She had her watch in her hand, and compared it quickly with the station clock as she spoke.
“I have secured Uncle Ben,” she said—all the ridicule of the name seemed to have vanished long ago. “He is drunk, and therefore cunning. It is only when he is sober that he is stupid. I have him in a cab downstairs, and have told your man to watch him. I have been to Mr. Cornish's rooms again, and he has not come in. He has not been in since morning, and they do not know where he is. No one knows where he is.”
Dorothy's lip quivered for a moment, and she held it with her teeth. Mrs. Vansittart touched her arm lightly with her gloved fingers—a strange, quick, woman's gesture.
“I went upstairs to his rooms,” continued Dorothy. “It is no good thinking of etiquette now or pretending——”
“No,” said Mrs. Vansittart, hurriedly, so that the sentence was never finished.
“I found nothing except two torn envelopes in the waste-paper basket. One in an uneducated hand—perhaps feigned. The other was Otto von Holzen's writing.”
“Ah! In Otto von Holzen's writing—addressed to Tony at the Zwaan at Scheveningen?”