Tormarin rose to his feet, tossing the stump of his cigarette into the fire.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “But I’m going to find out. Madonna”—turning to his mother—“did Jean tell you just exactly what Judith said when she rang her up on the’phone about this moonlight plan?”
“It wasn’t Judith who rang up,” replied Lady Anne, a faint misgiving showing itself in her face. “It was Geoffrey who gave the message.”
Tormarin looked at her with a sudden awakened expression in his eyes. There was dread in them, too—keen dread. The expression of a man who, all at once, sees the thing he values more than anything in the whole world being torn from him—dragged forcibly away from the shelter he could give into some unspeakable darkness of disaster.
“That settles it.” He pressed his finger against the bell-push and held it there, and when Baines came hurrying in response to the imperative summons, he said curtly: “Order me a fresh horse round at once—at once, mind—tell Harding to saddle Orion, and to look sharp about it.”
“Blaise”—Lady Anne’s obvious uneasiness had deepened to a sharp anxiety—“Blaise, what are you going to do? What—what are you afraid of?”
He looked her straight in the eyes.
“I’m afraid of just what you are afraid of, madonna—of the devil let loose in Geoffrey Burke.”
“And—and you’re going to look for her—for Jean?”
“I’m going to find her,” he corrected quietly.