“A box!” gasped Rolfe in surprise, bending quickly across to the speaker. “What do you mean—what do you suggest?”
“Well the natural suggestion is that the body of the midnight visitor was within that box?”
Charlie Rolfe did not reply. He sat staring open-mouthed, as though Max’s story had supplied the missing link in a chain of suspicions which had for a long time existed in his mind—as though he now knew the terrible and astounding truth.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Truth or Untruth.
The two men exchanged glances, each suspicious of the other.
Max tried to imagine the motive of his friend’s visit, while Rolfe, on his part, was undecided as to the extent of the other’s knowledge. To come there and boldly face Max had cost him a good many qualms. At one moment he felt certain that Max suspected, but at the next he laughed at his own fears, and declared himself to be a chicken-hearted fool. And so days had gone on until, unable to stand it further, he had at last resolved to call at Dover Street.
“You’re quite a stranger, Charlie,” Max remarked at last. “I haven’t seen you since the doctor disappeared so mysteriously.”