“Renata Molloy! She’s in this wretched conspiracy of yours, I suppose?”
Ember laughed.
“No,” he said.
“Then what is she?”
“I wish I knew,” said Ember, speaking soberly enough.
“But what you told me wasn’t true?”
“Some of it was. I was really rather pleased with my neat dovetailing. I’ll run over it, and you’ll see that I told the truth whenever I could. All that about my having known Molloy in Chicago—solid fact. Then I think I said that I ran across him again in London, and found he had taken Government service with Scotland Yard—that was fiction, and so was the yarn about his warning me that foreign agents were on the track of the Government formula. But it’s perfectly true that he has a daughter, and that she sometimes walks in her sleep. When I told you that she had come in—sleep walking—during an important conversation about the Government formula, and that neither Molloy nor I was sure how much she had heard, I was mingling fact and fiction. Renata Molloy happened in on a meeting of The Great Council—that is the Council of the managing agents from all the countries within the scope of our operations, and no one knew what she had heard, or what she understood. When I told you that I thought she would be safer down here under my own eye, and that I was not sure whether she had been got at, I was speaking very serious fact indeed. They’d have killed her then and there if corpses were just a little easier to dispose of in London. I now very much regret that we didn’t chance it.”
A trembling bewilderment had descended upon Jane. She saw Raymond stare for a moment at Ember with a curious horrified look and then drop her chin upon her hand again. Ember came a step nearer.
“Having disposed of that,” he said, “I should be glad if you would just look at these papers. Documentary evidence, as I said just now, is convincing. This is a short summary of our plans which has been issued to all managing agents. This is a list of those agents. They form The Great Council. These four names”—he paused—“I should have told you that there was an Inner Council. It is the Inner Council which really runs everything. There are four members. I come Second, Molloy was Third, and Belcovitch, who will be here presently, is Number Four.”
Jane’s heart beat faster and faster. She heard that Belcovitch would be there presently, but she could not tear herself away. She saw Raymond Heritage put out her left hand for the papers and glance at them indifferently, saw her brow contract as she read, saw her drop the first two papers upon her lap and lift the third. There was a dead silence whilst she read it. It was the list which gave the names of the Inner Council. She let it drop from her hand and an extraordinary rush of colour transformed her.