“Yes. I found it.”
“But where, and how?”
“It was fastened into the back of a picture, a mezzotint of Turner’s.”
“In the back of a picture!” she murmured, with a certain strange dejection which David found adorable; nor should it be forgotten that the only time David possessed absolute and undeniable evidence of the presence of some unseen person in his flat, he had shot at and wounded a man.
“Yes, dear—may I call you dear?”
“And you have it?”
“No.”
“No!” He felt a spasm of doubt in her very shoulders, a slight withdrawing from him, for Violet was ever being denied proof, the actual, tangible proof which alone can banish suspicion from a sorely-tried nature.
“Van Hupfeldt stole it from the flat during my absence.”