I saw in the shaded light that her big eyes were filled with tears—tears of joy by which mine were also dimmed.
“I’ve—I’ve had such a bad dream!” she managed to say. “But, oh! Mr Kemball, how glad I am that it is only a dream, and that the doctor says I am getting better.”
“I hope, Miss Seymour, that you’ll be quite right and about again within a week,” exclaimed Sir George cheerily.
And hearing those words she turned her wonderful eyes full on mine.
What words of sympathy and congratulation I uttered I scarcely know. How can I remember! I only recollect that when the great specialist touched me upon the shoulder as sign to leave her bedside, I bent and kissed her soft white hand.
All through the day and all that evening I remained eagerly expecting to hear news of Shaw’s arrest. Yet, knowing what a past-master he was in the art of evading the police, I despaired that he would ever be caught and brought up for punishment.
As I sat smoking in his armchair in the big morning-room I reflected deeply, and saw with what marvellous cunning and forethought he had misled Nicholson, Asta, myself—and, indeed, everybody—into a belief that he was devoted to the girl whom, so many years ago, he had adopted and brought up as his own daughter.
That decision to kill her lover and afterwards kill her was no sudden impulse, but the result of a carefully thought-out and ingenious plan. Whether the huge tarantula had been put into my room at that French inn with evil intent, or whether it had got loose, and had concealed itself there, I could not determine. Yet in the case of Guy and Asta there must, I decided, have been some very strong incentive—a motive which none had ever dreamed. As regards the incident at Scarborough, he must have placed the tarantula in Asta’s room in secret, and have succeeded in regaining possession of it. Indeed, inquiry I afterwards made showed that he had bribed one of the maid-servants while every one was absent to show him the house, his explanation being that he thought of purchasing it.
Shaw was a master-criminal. Bold and defiant, yet he was at the same time ever ready with means for escape, in case he was cornered. His exploit in the hotel at Aix showed how cunning and clever he was in subterfuge. He preserved a cloak of the highest respectability, and had even succeeded in being placed on the roll of Justices of the Peace—he, the man who regarded murder as the practice of a science, had actually sentenced poachers, wife-beaters, tramps, and drunkards to terms of imprisonment?
And yet so clever had he been that the Criminal Investigation Department had never recognised in the wealthy tenant of Lydford Hall the fugitive for whom they had so long been in search.