“He may live for years, of course,” she answered drily.
“What do you mean?” I asked, staring at her in amazement.
“I mean,” she said, looking straight at me, and her voice suddenly grew hard, “that when he is dead, the world will be rid of a creature who ought never to have been born.”
Her eyes blazed.
“Ah! Dick—Ah! Dick!” she went on with extraordinary force, sighing heavily, “if you only knew the life that man has led—the misery he has caused, the horrors that are traceable to his vile diabolical plots. My father and mother are only two of his many victims. He is a man I dread. I am not a coward, no one can call me that, but—but I fear Dago Paulton—I fear him terribly.” She was trembling in my arms, though whether through fear, or only from emotion, I could not say. Nor could I think of any apt words which might soothe her, except to say—
“Leave him to me, dearest. Yet from what you tell me,” I said after a pause, “I can only suppose that some one is—how shall I put it?—going to encompass Paulton’s death.”
“Who knows?” she asked vaguely, looking up into my eyes.
I shrugged my shoulders, but said nothing. There was nothing I could say. This much I had suspected at any rate—Paulton had been responsible for the chauffeur’s death—or Vera believed him to have been.
When I left my beloved late that night, and returned to King Street, I was not satisfied with my discoveries. So many mysteries still remained unsolved. What was the danger that had threatened her when she had rung me up at my flat, and begged me to help her? Where had she been staying? What danger threatened her now? What hold had the man Paulton over her, and why did she fear to disobey him? Most perplexing of all—what was her father’s secret, and why had he fled from Houghton?
There were many minor problems, too, which still needed solution. Who was Davies; what was his true name, and why was he so intimate with Sir Charles?