Anything that Mrs. Heasant had previously done in the way of outcry was easily surpassed as she raced upstairs and beat frantically at her son’s door.
“Miserable boy, what have you done to Dagmar?”
“It’s Dagmar now, is it?” he snapped; “it will be Geraldine next.”
“That it should come to this, after all my efforts to keep you at home of an evening,” sobbed Mrs. Heasant; “it’s no use you trying to hide things from me; Clotilde’s letter betrays everything.”
“Does it betray who she is?” asked Bertie; “I’ve heard so much about her, I should like to know something about her home-life. Seriously, if you go on like this I shall fetch a doctor; I’ve often enough been preached at about nothing, but I’ve never had an imaginary harem dragged into the discussion.”
“Are these letters imaginary?” screamed Mrs. Heasant; “what about the jewels, and Dagmar, and the theory of suicide?”
No solution of these problems was forthcoming through the bedroom door, but the last post of the evening produced another letter for Bertie, and its contents brought Mrs. Heasant that enlightenment which had already dawned on her son.
“Dear Bertie,” it ran; “I hope I haven’t distracted your brain with the spoof letters I’ve been sending in the name of a fictitious Clotilde. You told me the other day that the servants, or somebody at your home, tampered with your letters, so I thought I would give any one that opened them something exciting to read. The shock might do them good.
“Yours,
“Clovis Sangrail.”
Mrs. Heasant knew Clovis slightly, and was rather afraid of him. It was not difficult to read between the lines of his successful hoax. In a chastened mood she rapped once more at Bertie’s door.
“A letter from Mr. Sangrail. It’s all been a stupid hoax. He wrote those other letters. Why, where are you going?”