"Oh, the end ought to be to-day, or at least to-morrow. I've made secret inquiries in Wimbledon Park, and I hear that the doctor gave her up a day or so ago," he said grimly.
"That will be another distinct peril removed," remarked Lilla. "It serves the girl right for being too inquisitive."
"And the man Durrant cannot be back yet, eh?" asked Ena.
"No," was Boyne's reply. "I see by the papers that the ship has arrived at Cape Town. Even if he escaped there, and found his way back, he could not arrive in London for another three weeks or more. So when he does return—if he ever does—he will find Marigold silent in her grave, that a disaster has occurred in Bridge Place, and that we are no longer in London."
"And Lionel?" asked the Red Widow.
"Oh, we have nothing to fear from him. He's only a gibbering idiot who believes my story that he committed a crime—killed a little girl named Maggie—although he was quite innocent. I made him wear a hood whenever he saw me, and I did the same. He believed me to be a man named Wisden, the witness of his crime! And because of that he executed in blind obedience every order I gave him. The fact that for months he never saw my face impressed him, and thus the terror of the police has so got upon his unstrung nerves that he is fast going from bad to worse. As a bacteriologist he is, of course, wonderful. He was marked out as a coming man by the professors at the Laboratory at Oxford, before he took to drugs and his brain gave way."
"Where is he now?" asked Ena.
Boyne explained the man's hiding-place, adding: "I've given him money to go on with. When that is finished—well, we will consider what we shall do."
"We shall want him again, no doubt," laughed Ena.
"Probably," said Boyne. "But remember, if there are any awkward inquiries—as there may be if we can't settle completely with Céline—then we must be absent from London for a year or two."