Mayne Lennox! Mention of that name brought before Chisholm’s eyes a grim and ghastly vision of the past—a past which he had fondly believed was long ago dead and buried. There arose the face that had haunted him so continuously, that white countenance which appeared to him in his dreams and haunted him even in the moments of his greatest triumphs, social and political.
The shabbily attired man patiently awaited an answer, his eyes fixed upon the man before him.
“Yes,” answered Dudley at last, with a strenuous effort to calm the tumultuous beating of his heart.
“I was once acquainted with a man of that name.”
His visitor slowly changed his position, and a strange half-smile played about the corners of his mouth, as though that admission was the sum of his desire.
“May I ask under what circumstances you met this person?” he inquired, adding: “I am not asking through any idle motive of curiosity, but in order to complete a series of inquiries I have in hand, it is necessary for certain points to be absolutely clear.”
“We met at a card-party in a friend’s rooms,” Dudley said. “I saw something of him at Hastings, where he was spending the summer. Afterwards, I believe, he went abroad. But we have not met for years.”
“For how many years?”
“Oh, seven, or perhaps eight! I really could not say exactly.”
“Are you certain that Mayne Lennox went abroad?” inquired Cator as though suddenly interested.