Within twenty minutes Ashton-Kirk ran down the steps and sprang into the powerful looking car that awaited him; and well within the half hour he rang the bell at the marble palace built by the steel magnate during the last years of his life. A heavy-eyed man servant admitted him with astonished resentment. Miss Vale, looking very tall and very pale, met him in the hall. But for all her pallor she seemed quite collected, even smiling.
"Oh, I'm so sorry to have brought you out so early and on such a dismal morning," she said, lightly, leading him into a room at one side. "I'm sure it is very damp."
She sat down and motioned him to a chair; he studied her with some surprise; the transition from wild terror to her present calm was most notable.
"There has been a recovery of poise, evidently," Ashton-Kirk told himself. "She is still frightened, but for some reason is anxious to hide it."
"This morning," said Miss Vale, with a laugh that rang perfectly, "I found that I was only a woman after all. This—this dreadful thing so startled me that for a time I did not know what to do. My first impulse was to call you, and I acted upon it. But," with a pretty gesture of apology, "when I had recovered myself somewhat, I saw that I had disturbed you unnecessarily."
"You don't mean that, after all, Hume is not—"
She held up her hand for him to stop. A strong shudder seemed to run through her; she bent her head so that the light would not fall too strongly upon her face. In a moment, however, she recovered.
"Yes, yes," she said, her voice perfectly under control. "He is dead—shockingly murdered. What I mean is, that while the event is very dreadful—still, it does not really concern me more than any other crime of the same nature which we see staring at us from the columns of the newspapers every day. This man's being in my mind so much of late caused me to become unnerved when I heard the news."
"When did it occur?"
"Sometime since midnight."