‘If you go on worrying yourself like this, ma’am, you’ll be ill. You haven’t eaten a bit since you left home, though I’m sure the cutlets was done lovely. Shall I order some arrowroot for your supper? Or a basin of soup, now? That would be more nourishing.’
‘No, Mary, it’s no use. I can’t eat anything. How I wish Mr. Sampson would come!’
‘It’s almost too late to expect him, ma’am. I don’t suppose he’s left Hazlehurst. Perhaps he couldn’t get away to-day.’
‘Not get away!’ echoed Laura. ‘Nonsense! He would never abandon my husband in the hour of difficulty.’
The German waiter at this very moment announced, ‘Mr. Zambzon.’
‘I’m awfully late, Mrs. Treverton,’ said the little man, bustling in, ‘but I thought you’d like to see me, so I came in. I’ve engaged a room in the hotel, and I shall stay as long as I’m wanted, even if my Hazlehurst business goes to pot.’
‘How good you are! You have only just come to London?’
‘Only just come, indeed! I came by the train after yours. I was in London at seven o’clock. I’ve been with Mr. Leopold, the well-known solicitor—the man who’s so great in criminal cases, you know,—and I’ve got him for our side. And I’ve been down to Cibber Street with him, and we’ve picked up all the information we can. The landlady’s laid up with low fever, and so we couldn’t get much out of her; but we’ve seen Mr. Gerard, and we know pretty well what he has to bring forward against us, and I think he’ll be rather a reluctant witness. It’s a pity that Mr. Desrolles is out of the way. We might have made something out of him.’
Laura turned to him with a startled look. Desrolles! That was the name by which her husband had known her father. He, to whom an alias seemed so easy, had been known in his London lodgings as Mr. Desrolles. And he had been in the house at the time of the murder.
‘You have no fear as to the result, have you?’ Laura asked Sampson, with intense anxiety. ‘My husband will be able to prove himself innocent of this terrible crime.’