“They have met to-night. There is some mischief brewing. She is cruel, evil, unscrupulous.”
“I know—and a convicted criminal.”
“You know her, then?” she asked quickly, looking into my eyes.
“Yes. I am acquainted with Lady Lettice Lancaster, as she was once called, and I know that she was sentenced at the Old Bailey for a series of remarkably ingenious frauds. Is she an associate of your father’s?”
“She was once, I believe—before her sentence,” replied the girl. “She exercised over him a strange, incomprehensible fascination, as an evil woman so often can over a man. He acted at her bidding, and—well, I know but little, Mr Kemball, but, alas! what I know is, in itself, too much. I am surprised that Dad, knowing the woman’s character, should dare to again associate himself with her.”
“She introduced me to her brother, George King. Do you know him?”
“Yes. He sometimes passes as her brother and sometimes as butler or chauffeur. But he is her husband, Henry Earnshaw, sometimes known as Hoare.”
“And your father assisted them in their frauds, eh?”
“That is my supposition. I have no actual knowledge, for it was several years ago, when I was but a girl,” was her reply.
“And you fear that the outcome of the meeting to-night may be another mutual arrangement?”