“I am prepared to spare you to the utmost extent. Tell the hall-porter to bring your overcoat and hat, and to give you a sheet of note-paper and an envelope. Show me what you write. If it is satisfactory I shall start you with twenty pounds. You can send from London to-morrow for your belongings, as your hotel bill will be paid. But remember! One treacherous word from you and I telegraph to Scotland Yard.”
Mrs. Devar had a bad quarter of an hour when a penciled note from her son was delivered at her room and she read:
Dear Mater—I hardly had time to tell you that I am obliged to return to town this evening. Please make my apologies to Miss Vanrenen and Count Marigny. Yours ever,
J.
Medenham frowned a little at the reference to Cynthia, but something of the sort was necessary if an open scandal was to be avoided. As for “Dear Mater,” she was so unnerved that she actually wept. Hard and calculating though she might be, the man was her son, and the bitter experiences of twenty years warned her that he had been driven from Bristol by some ghost new risen from an evil past.
Medenham, however, believed that he had settled one difficulty, and prepared blithely to tackle another. He ran the car to the garage where he had arranged to meet Dale.
“Have you seen Simmonds?” was his first question.
“Yes, my l——, yes, sir.”
“Where is he?”