"You must understand that the blackguard had given my wife details of Mildare's death at a farm owned by a friend of his in Natal, and that Hannah—that my wife knew poor little Lucy Hawting had had a child by Mildare," Major Bingo spluttered. "That was why she asked Van Busch outright whether the girl with the nuns at Gueldersdorp was—could be—the same child, grown up? By the Living Tinker!—I never was in such a lather in my life! The better the light I try to put the thing in, the dirtier it looks. And I'm not half through yet, that's the worst of it!"
He mopped and mopped, and took several violent turns about the room, and subsided in a chair at length, and went on, waving the large pink cambric handkerchief, now a damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it.
"She says—Lady Hannah says—that the eagerness and curiosity with which the brute snapped up the hint she'd never meant to drop, warned her to shunt him off on another line, and give no more information. They got on money matters; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, my wife gave the welsher a bit of her mind, and he showed his teeth in a way that meant Murder. Just in time—before he could wring her neck round—and he'd started in to do it, you understand—Brounckers came stormin' and bullyin' in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and would be sent down to Gueldersdorp.... They packed her back that very day.... And not a week after, the pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the bogus letter from Mrs. Casey."
Saxham had thought. He said now:
"This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy for Brounckers, was disguised as the runner? Is that what has been proved? Did Lady Hannah see the man and recognise him?"
Bingo leaned forward to answer.
"Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond Town. But the day the Siege Gazette came out, with a blithering paragraph in it that never ought to have appeared, announcin'"—he coughed and crimsoned—"Lord Beauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare;—my wife was rung up at the Convalescent Hospital by a caller who wouldn't say where he telephoned from. And the message that came through—couched in queer, ambiguous language, and purportin' to come from an old friend—was a message for the young lady who is now Mrs. Saxham!"
Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a word. The Major went on:
"My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with Van Busch's. She remembered the name given her as that of the owner of the farm at which Mildare died, a place which by rights was in what's now the Orange River Colony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain: 'Are you So-and-So?' There was no answer to the question. But seven hours later the Mother-Superior was shot; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way to the Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran into one of the Sisters in his hurry, and nearly knocked her down."
"That," said Saxham, "has always been regarded as a suspicious circumstance. But the man was never subsequently traced."