She didn't even know when the girl left the room, but, with her hands clinched in her lap, sat looking half frantically out of the window.
What was it, she was asking herself, that he would have told her when Jessica entered? Could it have been a confession of his guilt? Would a guilty man have so spoken? What was it he meant? Was he innocent or guilty?
And, as if in answer to her unspoken question, a knock came upon the door, quick, incisive, as if the seeker for permission to enter realized the importance of her errand.
It was Ahbel.
"A telegram, miss!" she exclaimed, half breathlessly.
Carlita received it and tore it open hastily. It looked ordinary enough as it trembled in her hand, and yet there was something sinister in the array of figures as she flashed her eyes over them:
"2, 75, 107, 29, 12, 35, 18, 134; 24, 23, 18, 11, 126, 29, 23, 22, 55, 10, 324, 51, 23, 50, 135, 114, 45, 116, 19, 97, 17, 78, 4, 97."
Scarcely able to control her excitement, she sped across the floor to her escritoire, and snatched up the volume of "Sherlock Holmes" concealed there.
With trembling fingers she turned the pages and slowly counted out the words, horrible, ghastly in their import:
"The gentleman to whom you were engaged was not shot as you were told.
E. S."