LOVE'S CONFESSION.
I dined alone at the Club, and afterwards sat over my coffee in one of the smaller white-panelled rooms, gazing up at the Adams ceiling, and my mind full of the gravest thoughts.
What had Edwards meant when he promised me an unpleasant surprise? Had the woman Petre already made a statement incriminating my well-beloved?
If so, I would at once demand the arrest of her and her accomplices for attempted murder. It had suggested itself to me to make a complete revelation to Edwards of the whole of my exciting adventure at Colchester, but on mature consideration I saw that such a course might thwart my endeavours to come face to face with Digby.
Therefore I had held my tongue.
But were Edwards' suspicions that the assassin Cane and the man I knew as Sir Digby Kemsley were one and the same, correct, or were they not?
The method by which the unfortunate Englishman in Peru had been foully done to death was similar to the means employed against myself at Colchester on the previous night. Again, the fact that the victim did not shout and call for aid was, no doubt, due to the administration of that drug which produced complete paralysis of the muscles, and yet left the senses perfectly normal.
Was that Indian whom they called Ali really a Peruvian native—the accomplice of Cane? I now felt confident that this was so.
But in what manner could the impostor have obtained power over Phrida? Why did she not take courage and reveal to me the truth?
Presently, I took a taxi down to Cromwell Road and found my well-beloved, with thin, pale, drawn face, endeavouring to do some fancy needlework by the drawing-room fire. Her mother had retired with a bad headache, she said, and she was alone.