“So, on her behalf, I’ll just make a hurried search before the police comes. The things are not yours. If your heart wasn’t weak, I’d maul you till you were willing to hand them over of your own accord.”
With that David made a move toward the bureau, whereupon Van Hupfeldt uttered a scream and flew upon him like a cat-o’-mountain, but David flung him away to the other end of the room.
Scattered over the bureau were a number of letters in their envelopes ready for the post, and the first of these upon which David’s eye fell was directed to “Miss Violet Mordaunt.”
Here was luck! Even as his heart bounded, before even he had seen a word of the address, he was in darkness—Van Hupfeldt had switched off the light.
And now once again David felt himself outdone by the cunning of this man. The room was large, crowded with objects of luxury, and the switch a needle in a bundle of hay. In which direction to grope for it David did not know. He ran to where he had flung Van Hupfeldt, to compel him by main force to turn on the light. But Van Hupfeldt was no longer there. The suddenness of the darkness made it black to the eyes. David could not find the switch, and fearing lest Van Hupfeldt might snatch away the letter to Violet in the dark, he flew back to the bureau, over-setting first a chair, and then colliding upon Van Hupfeldt a little distance from the bureau. Again he flung Van Hupfeldt far, and, keeping near the bureau, groped along the beading of the wall, to see if he could encounter another switch.
In the midst of this search, his ears detected the sound of a key in the outer door, and understanding that help had arrived for the enemy, instantly he took his decision, felt for the eight or ten envelopes on the bureau, slipped them all into his pocket, and was gone. In the hall, coming inward he met Neil and an officer, but, as if making a deep bow to the majesty of the law, he slipped as easily as a wave under the officer’s hand, and disappeared through the wide-open door. The officer ran after him. This was simple. From the moment when David pitched through the house-door below the stairs, he was never more seen by that particular officer to the day of his death.
Under a lamp in Oxford-St., when he stopped running, he took out Strauss’s letters from his pocket with a hand that shook, for in his heart was the thought: “Suppose I have left hers behind!”
But no; that fifth one was hers: “Miss Violet Mordaunt, Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth.” Remembrance came to him with an ache of rapture. Within twenty-four hours he would see her. He was so pleased that he was at the pains to throw Strauss’s other letters into the first pillar-box. What did it matter now that the diary, certificates, anything or everything, had been filched from him? To-morrow, no, that day, he would see Violet.