“But he would never dare,” began Hilda, and stopped short, remembering Symington’s face as she had seen it that night in the train. Cruel—that was the word—the face of a man who would inflict torture to gain his end.
Risk had hit on the truth, Symington had not gone far North that morning. As a matter of fact he had left the train at Rugby, entered a powerful motor-car, and came South again—not to the Kingsway Grand Hotel, but to a rather dilapidated mansion situated at 336 Lester Road, Richmond.
* * * * *
At Dunford on the following evening, John Corrie found among the letters from the South one for himself. For the second time he gazed at a single pencilled word—“Arrested”—and shuddered ’twixt terror and hope. The man’s nerves seemed to be in rags, for he paled, started violently, and dropped the letter when the door of the post office opened.
But it was only a tourist who entered. Corrie’s whole being bounded up in relief—only to drop sickeningly at the stranger’s first words—
“I wish to see Miss Kitty Carstairs.”
CHAPTER XXIII
The woman with the red, expressionless face put her head into Kitty’s prison and said—“I’ve to tell ye that he’ll be coming to see you in five minutes from now.” Without waiting for a response she closed the door and shot the bolt.
Kitty was seated on the couch with a book in her hand. She had actually managed to read a little, though it is highly probable that she could not have told very clearly what the pages had been about. Yet the fact that she had been able to fix her attention on a mere story for the space of a couple of hours proved that she had regained a fair command over her wits, and recovered at least something of her courage. At all events, of the panic of twenty-four hours ago little trace remained. She was pale, but it was the pallor of anxiety, not terror; and now, at the woman’s announcement, the apprehension in her fine eyes was counterbalanced by a determined firming of her pretty, sensitive mouth.
“He can do nothing, after all,” she assured herself, “and it won’t be very long till they find out where I am. I must show him I’m not afraid of him.”