I thought a moment. “Suppose Mornac is with him?”
Speed fairly jumped. “That’s it! That’s the link we were hunting for! It’s Mornac—it must be Mornac! He is the only man; he had access to everything. And now that his Emperor is a prisoner and 312 his Empress a fugitive, the miserable hound has nothing to lose by the anarchy he once hoped to profit by. Tell me, Scarlett, does the tail wag the dog, after all? And which is the dog, Buckhurst or Mornac?”
“I once thought it was Buckhurst,” I said.
“So did I, but—I don’t know now. I don’t know what to do, either. I don’t know anything!”
I began to walk about the room, carefully, for my knees were weak, though I had no headache.
“It’s a shame for a pair of hulking brutes like you and me to desecrate this bedroom,” I muttered. “Mud on the floor—look at it! Sawdust and candle-wax over everything! What’s that—all that on the lounge? Has a dog or a cat been rolling over it? It’s plastered with tan-colored hairs!”
“Lion’s hairs from your coat,” he observed, grimly.
I looked at them for a moment rather soberly. They glistened like gold in the early sunshine.
Speed opened his mouth to say something, but closed it abruptly as a very faint tapping sounded on our door.
I opened it; Sylvia Elven stood in the hallway.