“I thought you disliked her.” Gimblet was very calm, almost indifferent.
“That’s a very different thing from thinking her capable ... surely it’s impossible.... What makes you suspect her?” Sir Gregory finished by asking, his curiosity getting the better of his incredulity.
“I don’t say I suspect her,” Gimblet answered patiently. “I say that suspicion might possibly fall on her more reasonably than on Mr. Sidney, with whom, by the way, I think she is in love.”
“Really, how do you know that?”
“I have evidence that she sympathised very deeply with his troubles, and carried her sympathy to a length unusual in young ladies for men to whom they are not attached. I saw him last Sunday in the company of a girl, who I think must have been she. If it was, there is no doubt about the thing. Anyone could see it in her face at a glance.”
“Still, if that were so, I don’t see why she should injure Mrs. Vanderstein.”
“Love is a very common prompter of crime. I don’t say it is likely, but it is not impossible that this young woman, knowing Sidney to be in terrible straits for want of money, his career threatened, heaven knows what other threats on his tongue, should be prepared to go to desperate lengths to procure him what he needs. You never can tell what they will do in such cases; and the one piece of real evidence that I have shows that she did not mean to sit by idle while her lover went to his ruin.”
Gimblet took Barbara’s telegraph form from his notebook, and spread it on the table before him. “Look at this,” he said; and Sir Gregory got up and peered eagerly over his shoulder, eyeglasses on nose.
“Luck is coming your way at last expect to have good news by Wednesday removing all difficulties.”
“There’s no signature. Who is it from?” he asked.