"Granted. Let us go on. Mr. Smith's installation at your place as agent was closely followed by the occupancy of the Maze, Mrs. Grey and her servants arriving as its tenants. Was it not so, Sir Karl?"
"I--think it was," assented Karl, appearing to be recalling the past to his memory, and feeling himself in a bath of horror as he saw that the all-powerful man before him, powerful to know, to rule, and to act, was quite at home behind the scenes.
"Well, I cannot help thinking that the one may have been connected with the other; that Smith's appearance at your place, and the immediately-following occupancy of the Maze, may have been, so to say, connecting links in the same chain," continued the superintendent. "A doubt of it was floating in my mind before I had the honour of seeing you, Sir Karl: but I failed to detect any adequate cause; there was none on the surface. You have now supplied that, by telling me who Smith is--Salter's relative."
"Indeed I cannot understand you," said Karl, turning nevertheless from hot to cold.
"The Maze is a place--what with its surrounding labyrinth of trees and its secret passages and outlets--unusually favourable for concealment. A proscribed man might hide himself there for years and years, and never be discovered unless suspicion were accidentally drawn on him. I think the chances are that Salter is there; and that his cousin, Smith, is keeping guard over him for his protection, while ostensibly fulfilling only the duties of your agency. They may have discovered in some way the desirable properties of the Maze and laid their plans to come to it accordingly."
It was so faithful a picture of what Smith was really doing at Foxwood--though the one he was watching over was a very different man from Salter--that Karl Andinnian almost thought some treacherous necromancy must have been at work. All he could do was, to speak forcibly against the view, and to declare that there could not be any foundation for it.
"That is only your opinion against mine, Sir Karl," observed the superintendent courteously. "You may rely upon it, I think, that the fact of Salter's being there would be kept from you, of all people."
"Do you forget the slur you would cast on Mrs. Grey?"
"As to that, Salter may be some relative of hers. Even her husband--even her brother. I remember it was said, at the time his case fell, that he had one sister. In either case, of course Mrs. Grey--the name she goes under--would not allow the fact of his concealment there to transpire to you."
How could Karl meet this? Sitting there, in his perplexity and pain, he could not see a step before him.