"Because I am bound to admit that if I had not dined at your house on Monday evening, many, if not all, of the amazing events of the past thirty-six hours could not have happened."
"I don't agree with you—not one little bit," she protested emphatically. "Why, the detective-man himself said that the Young Manchus have been searching ever since the beginning of the year for proof of Dad's connection with the revolutionaries, and he was candid enough to tell us that if it hadn't been for you that horrid Wong Li Fu would have got me into the car. No, Mr. Theydon, our meeting has proved most fortunate for me. Suppose I had really been captured! Would he have gagged me and taken me away to some lonely place, where I would be kept a prisoner, or even killed?"
Theydon had no desire that her mind should dwell on such a harrowing topic. He shuddered to think of her fate if ever she fell into the hands of the miscreants who had not scrupled to murder Mrs. Lester. She evidently regarded the crime in No. 17 Innesmore Mansions as the sequel to some political disturbance in far-off Shanghai. It had not occurred to her that a hapless woman had been done to death merely as a warning to her father of the fate in store for him and his if he did not yield to the demand of the reactionary party in China, and deliver over to their vengeance some hundreds of the leading men in that distressed country.
"I doubt whether Wong Li Fu and his associates would have dared to offer you any real violence," he said. "At the worst, I suppose, they might have retained you as a hostage."
"A hostage for what?"
"For their claim against Mr. Forbes."
"But what has he done? He has never been in China."
"He is a power in the financial world. If the reform party cannot borrow money the movement will collapse. At any rate that is what the Manchus believe, and they will strain every nerve to effect their purpose."
"But why did they kill poor Mrs. Lester?"
Theydon felt that he was getting into deep water. This clear-sighted girl would soon have the various threads of the enigma in her hands, and then she could not fail but discover the true meaning of Edith Lester's death.