‘I know you,’ Isodore continued. ‘You were born near Mallow, joined the United Brotherhood thirty years ago, and your Number was Twenty-six. If I am wrong, you will please correct me.’
‘For goodness’ sake, miss—my lady, I mean—don’t speak so loud. Think what might happen to me if any one knew!’
‘No wonder your countrymen fail, with such chicken-hearts among them,’ Isodore observed scornfully. ‘I do not want to do you any harm; quite the contrary. There is an advertisement in to-day’s Times. Your mistress is in search of a maid. Is that so?’
Timothy Varley began to breathe a little more freely. ‘Yes,’ he answered glibly; ‘she does want a maid. She must be honest, sober, and industrious; ready to sit up all night if necessary, and have a good temper—not that Miss Enid will try any one’s temper much. The last girl was discharged’——
‘Now, Mr Varley, I know a girl who must fill that vacancy. I do not wish to threaten you or hold any rod of terror over your head; but I shall depend upon you to procure it for my protégée.’
The conversation apparently was not going to be so pleasant. Timothy Varley’s mind turned feebly in the direction of diamond robberies.
‘Well, miss—that is, my lady—if I may make so bold as to ask you a question: why, if the matter is so simple, don’t you write to my young mistress and settle the matter that way?’
‘Impossible,’ Isodore replied, ‘for reasons I cannot enter into with you. You must do what I ask, and that speedily.—You have a certain Monsieur le Gautier at your house often?’
This question was so abruptly asked, that Varley could not repress a start. ‘We have,’ he growled—‘a good deal too often, to please me. My master dare not call his body his own since he first began to come to the house with his signs and manifestations.—You see,’ he explained, ‘servants are bound to hear these things.’
‘At keyholes and such places,’ Isodore smiled. ‘Yes, I understand such things do happen occasionally. So this Le Gautier is a spiritualist, is he; and Sir Geoffrey is his convert?’