'I have been very anxious,' were her first words. 'Perhaps I have been foolish, but somehow I seem to have got into a new world, and I might very well pose for a Braddon heroine. I believe I am growing hysterical. What with my own little mystery, which seems to have stepped into the background, happily for me, and all the bigger mysteries—but there,' breaking into a nervous laugh, 'I can hold my tongue. Now tell me what happened last night. Oh!' catching my look of surprise, 'something happened, I know. I felt it.'
She was indeed woefully nervous, but to withhold anything would only increase the strain; so I told her as briefly as possible the story of my encounter, and the part played in it by Lossing and Dave. But I did not speak of Dave's meeting with Monsieur Voisin, and I hardly needed to tell her how it happened that my friend and Lossing were so fortunately at hand.
'I am not surprised,' she said, when I had told my story, 'but I am, oh, so thankful that you escaped with nothing worse. I felt so sure there was danger, and I urged you into it. But if you had not gone, I feel certain it would have been worse.'
She talked on in this strain for some moments, and it was plain to me, though she did not put the thought into words, that she believed the attack was meant for Lossing, and not for myself.
Suddenly she sprang up. 'I am forgetting poor Gerald Trent!' she exclaimed, and crossing the room, unlocked her desk, took out the letter, and placed it in my hands. It was a long letter, full of lamentations and repetitions; telling the story in a rambling, exclamatory, hysterical fashion; the letter of a young girl, a stranger to sorrow and its discipline, who finds herself suddenly plunged into a labyrinth of fear, terror, suspense; loving much and tortured through that love; and her story was briefly this:
Mr. Trent had seized the opportunity afforded by the change in his wife's condition, which, while neither really better nor worse, was much quieter. 'In fact,' wrote Miss O'Neil, 'while she does not recognise any of us, she constantly fancies us all about her, and she talks to him in such a low, pathetic, pitiful tone, half an hour at a time, and then drops into a doze, only to wake up and begin over again. She does not know us, and while in this state, Dr. Lane says, she is better alone with the nurse.' This being the case, Mr. Trent had left home for a day to look after some long-neglected business matter, and in his absence the letter had arrived. It was addressed to Mr. Trent in a strange hand, a woman's hand it would seem, and it was from Chicago. They had waited in anxious suspense until, chancing to think that it might be an important message and a prompt answer required, Miss Trent had, after some hesitation, opened the letter, a copy of which was at this point inserted. It ran thus, beginning with Mr. Trent's full name and correct address:
'Sir,
'In writing this I am perhaps risking my own life, as your son's is risked every day that he passes a prisoner in a place where he is as safely hidden as if he were already out of the world.
'Not only is your boy a prisoner, but he is a sick man. Your advertised rewards have been read and laughed at. The men who have him in charge are no common criminals. They mean to secure a fortune in return for young Trent. They know that his father is a millionaire, and his sweetheart an heiress in her own right.
'It is in my power, as one of the party in possession, to release your son. I waste no time in platitudes, but state frankly here my object in thus addressing you. I wish to leave the clique for reasons of my own, and to do this I must have money. This is why I propose to help you for a consideration. The "clique" will take no less than a modest fortune, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I will accept ten thousand. For this sum I will find a way to set your son at liberty.