There was, possibly, the hope that he might have provided for their transmission to herself, but she did not think so; it would not be in keeping with his brutality and his greed to have provided for her safety after his decease. If he had not left those signatures to herself they would be inevitably discovered by his men of business, and be made public as a part of monies due to him. All the unutterable torment which she had sold herself to the Minotaur to escape would again be her portion. She would be at Katherine Massarene’s mercy!
For she had no doubt that his daughter would inherit the whole of his wealth, and with his wealth his hold over his debtors. She knew little or nothing of business, but she knew that she, like all the princes and lords who had been his debtors, would see her financial relations with him exposed to the light of day; unless he had had mercy enough in him to provide for her safety, which was not probable.
She passed the hours miserably, though having summoned her women she had taken her bath and had tried to sleep.
She could get no rest even from chloral. When some semi-unconsciousness came over her she saw in her dreams the ghost of Massarene with a smile upon his face. “Here I am again!” his shade said, like a clown in a pantomime. “Here I am again, my pretty one!”—and he laid his icy grip on her and grinned at her with fleshless skeleton jaws.
Early in the morning she was awakened from a late and heavy slumber by the cries of the newspaper boys passing down the street and shouting, as their precursors had done on the previous evening: “Murder of a Member of Parliament! Assassination by an Anarchist! Awful crime at the gates of Harrenden House!”
Then it was true, and not a nightmare, which the day could dissipate!
She felt torn in two between relief and apprehension; with her breakfast they brought her the morning papers, which announced the ghastly event in large capital letters. There were no details given because there were none to give; the papers said that there was great activity at Scotland Yard, but at present nothing had transpired to account for the crime.
Later in the day she drove to Harrenden House and left two cards for the widow and the daughter.
On that for Margaret Massarene she had written:
“My whole heart is with you. So shocked and grieved for the loss of my good friend.”