“Oh!—well, he’s away just now. He was with me in London only the other day,” she replied. “But, as you know, he’s always travelling.” Then she added: “I’m going into this shop a moment. Will you wait for me? I’m so pleased to see you again, and looking so well. It seems really ages since we were at Gardone, doesn’t it?” and she smiled that old sweet smile I so well remembered.
“I’ll wait, of course,” I replied, and, assisting her out, I watched her pass into the big drapery establishment. Then I idled outside amid the crowd of women who were dawdling before the attractive windows, as is the feminine habit.
If it had been she who had rescued me from death and had released me, what a perfect actress she was. Her confusion had only lasted for a few seconds. Then she had welcomed me, and expressed pleasure at our re-encounter.
I recollected the bow of ribbon-velvet which reposed in my pocket, and the Indian bangle I had found. I remembered, too, those agonized, terrified cries in the night—and all the mysteries of that weird and silent house!
When she came forth I would question her; I would obtain from her the truth anent those remarkable happenings.
Was it of that most ingenious and dastardly plot she had warned me? Was her own conviction that she must suffer the penalty of death based upon the knowledge of the deadly instrument, that venomous reptile used by the assassins?
Could it be that Pennington himself—her own father—was implicated in this shameful method of obtaining money and closing the lips of the victims?
As I stood there amid the morning bustle of Regent Street out in the broad sunshine, all the ghastly horrors of the previous night crowded thickly upon me. Why had she shrieked: “Ah! not that—not that!” Had she, while held prisoner in that old-fashioned drawing-room, been told of the awful fate to which I had been consigned?
I remembered how I had called to her, but received no response. And yet she must have been in the adjoining room.
Perhaps, like myself, she had fainted.