‘Then you think that—juggling villain did get hold of her?’
‘Undoubtedly. Here is my view of the case, mind it is only a hypothesis and you must take it for what it is worth. It seems to me quite clear that the Arab, as we will call the person for the sake of identification, was somewhere about the premises when you thought he wasn’t.’
‘But—where? We looked upstairs, and downstairs, and everywhere—where could he have been?’
‘That, as at present advised, I am not prepared to say, but I think you may take it for granted that he was there. He hypnotised the man Holt, and sent him away, intending you to go after him, and so being rid of you both—’
‘The deuce he did, Champnell! You write me down an ass!’
‘As soon as the coast was clear he discovered himself to Miss Lindon, who, I expect, was disagreeably surprised, and hypnotised her.’
‘The hound!’
‘The devil!’
The first exclamation was Lessingham’s, the second Sydney’s.
‘He then constrained her to strip herself to the skin—’