Only when they described their secret visit to the house in Park Lane, and the extraordinary discoveries they had made there, did their hearer evince surprise. Then, knitting his brows, he nodded as though he understood. And when they told him of Adam’s suicide, he drew a deep breath of apparent relief.
“That man,” he said, in a low, distinct voice, with scarce a trace of accent—“that man was my enemy, as well as Statham’s. It was he who, in order to further his speculative financial schemes, paid an assassin to throw a bomb at my carriage—the bomb that killed the poor little child! He was an adventurer who had filched money from widows and orphans—a scoundrel, and an assassin. The assassin, when in the fortress at Belgrade, confessed to the identity of his employer. But in the meantime he disappeared—to South America, it is believed. Prior to the attempt upon me, Lyle, the mining engineer, was his cat’s-paw, as he has ever since been—a good fellow at heart, but weak and at the same time adventurous. Once or twice they made big profits out of concessions for copper mining obtained from my predecessor in office. When Adam found that I refused to participate in business that was a fraud upon the public in Paris and London, he plotted to get rid of me. Fortunately he did not succeed; but when the truth was exposed to the Servian Government that he was the real assassin, certain valuable concessions were at once withdrawn from him, and he was thereby ruined. He vowed vengeance upon me, and also upon Statham—to whom the concessions had been transferred—a terrible vengeance. But soon afterwards he disappeared, and we heard, upon what seemed to be good authority, that he was dead. He had been shot in a drunken brawl in Caracas.”
“And then he suddenly turned up again—eh?” Max remarked.
“Yes; and for that reason Mr Statham suggested that I and my daughter Maud should disappear to some place to which he could not trace us. Statham defied his threats, but at the same time thought that if we disappeared in such a manner that the police would not seek us, it would be a wise step. For that reason I arranged that the furniture, as well as ourselves, should disappear, in order to make it appear that we had suddenly removed, and also to prevent the police searching too inquisitively for ‘missing persons.’ Had they done this, our hiding-place would soon have been discovered. I disappeared more for Maud’s sake, than for my own. I knew the desperate character of the man, and the mad vengeance within his villainous heart.”
“But Statham also feared him,” remarked Charlie, recollecting the occasion when his employer had betrayed such terror.
“Yes. The exact facts I do not know. He will tell you himself,” answered the ex-Minister.
“Maud was in London last night, and called upon Statham,” Max remarked.
“She called in secret lest she might be seen and followed by Adam,” her father replied. “She went there to return to Statham a sum of money he had sent her.”
“For what?”
“He wished to know the whereabouts of Lorena Lyle, who had been her schoolfellow in Belgrade. Statham, I fear, intended, in some way, to avenge himself upon Lyle—and on his daughter more especially—on account of his association with his enemy. The girl is in London, and he wished to know where she was living.”