"But who was the other woman?" put in Sir Edgar, as Jennifer sank back in her chair, apparently exhausted by the recital.
"I think," said Cleek, softly, "that Lady Margaret would probably know her."
"Aggie, the woman who waited on me," the girl cried. "Why, of course, that accounts for it. She came down into the cellar frightfully excited and did nothing but drink and drink. That was how the Hindoo, the other man I mean, was able to get me out of the vault. She had dropped off into a drunken stupor and nothing seemed to arouse her."
"I never thought of your being in the house," said Miss Wynne, as she looked piteously at Lady Margaret; "please forgive me! You don't know how desperate I was for money."
"It's all right," replied Lady Margaret, impulsively. "I don't think they would have hurt me, only when I discovered the trick, they did not know what to do. Thank Heaven I am safe out of it." She stretched out an impulsive hand to the other girl and their fingers met silently.
But Lady Brenton was eager to get on with the story.
"How did you come to discover where Margaret had been taken?" she asked Cleek who had sat silent during all this recital, listening to it with occasional nods as though he had heard it all already. "To think that I let that devil sit in my drawing room while all the time he was keeping her a prisoner——"
"I owe that to Dollops," said Cleek, with a friendly little nod to that worthy. "While making my investigations in the house, John and the woman Aggie caught me foul and made me a prisoner. They threatened indeed to kill me if I did not reveal where I had hidden Lady Margaret, which, of course, showed that she had been removed from the vault by someone unknown to them. At that time I was as much in the dark as they themselves, but a strong gleam of sunlight revealed caught in the window frame two little shreds, one of gold, the fatal gold scarf again, and one of tweed, smelling strongly of jasmine. I guessed then that she was either in the hands of Gunga Dall or of the Hindoo priests, and I was right.
"Afterward, when I found the animals down in the vaults and came upon the circus with no animals in it—not the temptation of a £5 note would procure me a look at one—I knew their purpose. It remained then but to see that they were not removed that night, and also to keep guard over the caravan, which you may be sure I did....