"What—of procuring the thing?"
Undershaw nodded.
Tatham considered a moment. Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she understood.
But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the widow and daughter.
"Not to-night—not to-night," pleaded Undershaw who had seen Netta
Melrose professionally, only that morning. "I dread the mere shock for
Mrs. Melrose. Let them have their sleep! I will be over early to-morrow."
XXI
By the first dawn of the new day Tatham was in the saddle. Just as he was starting from the house, there arrived a messenger, and a letter was put into his hand. It was from Undershaw, who, on leaving Duddon the night before, had motored back to the Tower, and taken Faversham in charge. The act bore testimony to the little doctor's buffeted but still surviving regard for this man, whom he had pulled from the jaws of death. He reported in his morning letter that he had passed some of the night in conversation with Faversham, and wished immediately to pass on certain facts learnt from it, first of all to Tatham, and then to any friend of Faversham's they might concern.
He told, accordingly, the full story of the gems, leading up to the quarrel between the two men, as Faversham had told it to him.
"Faversham," he wrote, "left the old man, convinced that all was at an end as to the will and the inheritance. And now he is as much the heir as ever! I find him bewildered; for his mind, in that tragic half-hour, had absolutely renounced. What he will do, no one can say. As to the murderer, we have discussed all possible clues—with little light. But the morning will doubtless bring some new facts. That Faversham has not the smallest fraction of responsibility for the murder is clear to any sane man who talks with him. But that there will be a buzz of slanderous tongues as soon as ever the story is public property, I am convinced. So I send you these fresh particulars as quickly as possible—for your guidance."
Tatham thrust the letter into his pocket, and rode away through the December dawn. His mother would soon be in the thick of her own task with the two unconscious ones at Duddon. His duty lay—with Lydia! The "friend" was all alive in him, reaching out to her in a manly and generous emotion.