“Well,” I exclaimed, “what is your advice? How shall we act?”
Even now I was not altogether convinced of Keene’s good-will. The horror and fear in which Lolita had formerly held him somehow clung to me, and I could not help suspecting that this man who had struck up an acquaintance with George in the wilds of the Zambesi, and had come so boldly among those whom it was his intention to unmask, was now playing us false.
Yet in word and manner he was perfectly open and straightforward.
“Have patience, Lady Lolita,” he urged. “Mr Woodhouse will assist me in this very difficult piece of diplomacy that we are about to undertake. Had it not been for the fact that our friend here unfortunately gave Marie Lejeune warning that night in Chelsea, when the police were waiting to trap her, we should have had no necessity for this present scheming. The truth would then have been revealed and the guilty would have gone to their just punishment.”
“I know! I know!” I cried. “It was foolish on my part. But I believed I was acting in Lady Lolita’s interests. I see, however, that I made a mistake—a fatal mistake.”
“We must rectify it,” he said. “Her ladyship has been frank with me concerning your mutual affection, and I will not stand by and see her hurled to her grave by the dastardly schemes of her enemies. You admitted to me that you discovered upon the body of Hugh Wingfield a certain paper in cipher. Will you not allow me sight of it?”
“A paper in cipher!” gasped my love, glancing at me. “Was that found upon him?”
“Yes,” was my reply. “I discovered a paper in a woman’s hand, and written in the chequer-board cipher.”
“And the keyword was what?” she inquired in breathless eagerness, turning her great blue eyes to mine.
“Ah! I haven’t any idea of the keyword,” I admitted.