In a moment I had invented an excuse.
“Why,” I said, “that’s the cape my sister lost when she was staying with me. She went out with her little daughter to pick wild flowers, laid it down in the wood and forgot all about it.”
Then I gladly took possession of it, gave Jacobs a tip, dropping a hint at the same time that it was not necessary for him to talk about it, for if he did there would be all sorts of wild theories formed as to its connexion with the mysterious tragedy. “The police would be sure to begin worrying over nothing,” I added.
“I quite understand, sir,” was the gamekeeper’s answer. “Mr Redway and his men are worse than useless. They’ve made a lot of fuss and haven’t even found out yet who the poor young man was! I shall say nothing about it, for they’d only begin to question and worry me, as well as you.”
And so I had taken the fur cape, and that same night had surreptitiously buried it in my garden.
When at last the stranger’s consultation with Lolita had ended, I recognised how completely my love was in the man’s thraldom. He held power over her inevitable and complete. Why?
Was it because he knew her guilty secret?
She had, in a moment of desperation, declared that he did, and besought him to spare her.
“I will do my best,” was his rather evasive answer. “The man who loves you, Lady Lolita, will help me, and between us we may, I hope, effect your freedom.”
“I am ready to do anything—to go anywhere in order to serve her ladyship,” I declared, with deep earnestness. “I am only glad that we have now come to a thorough understanding.”