“I wonder where Mr Mullet is—why he doesn’t write or telephone to me, as he promised.”
“Don’t distress yourself about him,” urged the old Professor. “We hold the secret, and for to-night at least that is sufficient.”
And then, after gathering the typed sheets together he put a fastener through them and locked the precious decipher carefully in one of the drawers of his writing-table. Then a few moments later, it already being two o’clock in the morning, they both ascended to their rooms.
When upon the landing, the old man kissed his daughter tenderly on the brow as was his habit, saying:
“Good-night, my child. I fear you must be very tired. But think!—we have completed our task. We alone know the great secret which will convulse the whole civilised world!”
In her own pretty room Gwen threw herself into the cosy chintz-covered armchair before the fire, and pondered deeply.
She was thinking of Frank—ever of him. Though she had been fond of flirtation, and though perhaps she had committed grave breaches of the convenances before she had known young Farquhar, yet all had now changed. She would give her very life for him—for was she not his, and his alone?
Over her spread the thought of the man who had posed as Frank’s friend—that man who had laughed defiance in her face, the man who was in league with her father’s enemies. Who was he? What was he? she wondered. Then there rose before her the recollection of the man Mullet, the man with the ugly past, as he himself had admitted, yet nevertheless devoted to his little daughter, and a gentleman. She longed to see him again—to introduce him to her lover, and to tell the latter the whole strange truth.
To her, it seemed as though Mullet feared the man who had so cleverly entrapped her, just as he was the “cat’s-paw” of the bloated red-faced man who had raised his hand to strike her.
Who were these people? she wondered. Why did Mullet fear them?