'You will not?'
'No.'
'Coward!'
'You are mad, Sir Ranald, to address me, a tried soldier, thus injuriously,' said Goring, more sadly than bitterly. 'I have worn my Victoria Cross,' he added, striking his breast, 'by no solitary act of rashness, but by acknowledged proofs of disciplined courage! and my name has an echo still on the north-east frontier of India.'
'Coward!' hissed the old man's voice again, as he looked round for some missile to throw at the head of his visitor, who, seeing it was useless to protract an interview so painful and terrible, at once withdrew, and the fierce, mocking laughter—and strange laughter it was—of Sir Ranald jarred sorely on his ear as he did so.
His head was in a whirl—what was to be done? The old man's anger and epithets he pardoned; but from his utterances he gathered that Alison was abducted or absent, and that he was supposed to be the author of the mystery that now filled him with terror and anxiety.
When was she missed? Had she been decoyed from the hotel, or abducted in the street, and how long since?
On these points the concierge, on having a couple of five franc pieces deftly slipped into his palm, soon enlightened him.
She had gone one night with Lord Cadbury to the Théâtre des Variétés, and milord had come home without her in great terror and dismay, all search had proved unavailing, even the ponds in the Park of the Avenue Rubens had been dragged in vain till the ice came.
'How long is it since she disappeared?'