CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH A DISCOVERY IS MADE.
It was past four in the morning when Aloysius Stapleton got back to his flat in Sandringham Mansions, Maida Vale. After remaining with La Planta nearly an hour, he had gone back to Cavendish Square, where he found Jessica still unconscious, her symptoms being somewhat similar to Archie’s, though her brain, while she slept, seemed to be active. Several times she had, he was told, murmured incoherently, and twice she had spoken several words. Even when he arrived there her lips kept quivering at intervals, as if she were dreaming.
“How long ago did the guests leave?” he inquired of her maid.
“The last few of them have not been long gone,” she answered, “not above twenty minutes.”
“Do you know which were the last to go?”
“I don’t, sir. I only heard them leaving. Ought she not to be put to bed now, as you don’t wish the doctor to be sent for?”
“Yes, take her upstairs. She will be all right in the morning.”
“I sincerely hope so. She is never taken this way—never.”
The maid spoke almost reproachfully, as though Stapleton were in some way responsible for her mistress having fainted.