Within a short time from receiving his instructions,
Whelks introduced Chayter into the library, and stationed himself outside the door, with his ear to the keyhole, to put himself in possession of what transpired at the interview, but a current of air so sharp and so steady poured through the small opening into his ear, that he was compelled to retire, to avoid another onslaught of his ear-ache.
Chayter’s quick eye detected, as soon as she was alone with Mr. Grahame, a little pile of sovereigns, some eight or ten, upon the table. Mr. Grahame pointed to them.
“They shall be yours,” he said, “if you afford me any satisfactory information respecting the disappearance of Miss Grahame.”
“I can only tell you what I know sir,” replied the girl, regarding the sovereigns with a wishful eye.
“And what you may have reason to assume,” he added.
He then put a variety of questions to her, some of which she answered truthfully, and others by mere invention. It was not much that he ascertained, yet enough to know that Helen was in the habit of meeting some person at night in the garden; that whoever he was, he frequently addressed letters to her, and was no doubt the person who, being discovered suddenly by the Honorable Lester Vane, had felled that gentleman to the earth.
Mr. Grahame racked his brain to no purpose to fix upon some one likely to be the man who had so singularly beguiled his daughter from her high place, and at length he handed the money to Chayter, and bade her, if she could obtain any further information upon the strange subject, to communicate it to him, and she should be liberally rewarded.
“I’ll find her out,” said Chayter, when she left. “It will be worth my while. She’ll be clever if she keeps herself hidden from me!”
Chayter was premature in her conclusions.