Breton stared at this scene for a moment in utter consternation. Then he made one step towards an inner door, and Spargo followed him. Together they entered an inner room—a sleeping apartment. There was no one in it, but there were evidences that Elphick had just as hastily packed a bag as he had destroyed his papers. The clothes which Spargo had seen him wearing the previous evening were flung here, there, everywhere: the gorgeous smoking-jacket was tossed unceremoniously in one corner, a dress-shirt, in the bosom of which valuable studs still glistened, in another. One or two suitcases lay about, as if they had been examined and discarded in favour of something more portable; here, too, drawers, revealing stocks of linen and underclothing, had been torn open and left open; open, too, swung the door of a wardrobe, revealing a quantity of expensive clothing. And Spargo, looking around him, seemed to see all that had happened—the hasty, almost frantic search for and tearing up and burning of papers; the hurried change of clothing, of packing necessaries into a bag that could be carried, and then the flight the getting away, the——
“What on earth does all this mean?” exclaimed Breton. “What is it, Spargo?”
“I mean exactly what I told you,” answered Spargo. “He’s off! Off!”
“Off! But why off? What—my guardian!—as quiet an old gentleman as there is in the Temple—off!” cried Breton. “For what reason, eh? It isn’t—good God, Spargo, it isn’t because of anything you said to him last night!”
“I should say it is precisely because of something that I said to him last night,” replied Spargo. “I was a fool ever to let him out of my sight.”
Breton turned on his companion and gasped.
“Out—of—your—sight!” he exclaimed. “Why—why—you don’t mean to say that Mr. Elphick has anything to do with this Marbury affair? For God’s sake, Spargo——”
Spargo laid a hand on the young barrister’s shoulder.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to hear a good deal, Breton,” he said. “I was going to talk to you today in any case. You see——”
Before Spargo could say more a woman, bearing the implements which denote the charwoman’s profession, entered the room and immediately cried out at what she saw. Breton turned on her almost savagely.