“Tell me darling. Do tell me?”
Again her chest heaved and fell beneath her furs.
“Well, Claude. It’s—it’s a strange story—as strange as any woman has ever lived to tell,” she said at last, with great hesitation and speaking very slowly. “On that morning when I left I received a letter purporting to come from you, and urging me to meet you in secret on the departure platform of the Great Northern station at King’s Cross. Naturally, much puzzled, I went there, wondering what had happened. While waiting, a woman—the woman you have seen—came up to me and told me that you had sent her—that you wished to see me in secret in connexion with your invention, but that you were in hiding because you feared that some spies intended to obtain knowledge of the truth. She said that there were enemy spies on every hand, and that it would be best to go over to the hotel, and there wait till night before we went North to Grantham, whither you had gone.”
“Grantham!” I echoed. “I’ve not been in Grantham for years.”
“But I believed that you were there, so plausible was the woman’s story,” she replied. “We left at night, travelling in a first-class compartment together. On the way, I suddenly suspected her. Somehow I did not like the look in those strange eyes of hers, and I accused her of deceiving me. Indeed, while dozing, I had seen her carefully take my chatelaine, put something into it, and drop it out of the window. We were in a tunnel, I believe.”
“Then it was that woman who put the cipher-message into your card-case!” I exclaimed. “Yes, go on.”
“Yes,” she replied. “I sprang up, and tried to pull the communication-cord as we came out of the tunnel, but she prevented me. She pushed a sponge saturated with some pungent-smelling liquid into my face, and then I knew nothing more until I found myself in a small room in a cottage somewhere remote in the country.”
“Then you were detained there—eh?”
“Yes. Forcibly. That awful woman tried, by every means in her power, to force or induce me to reveal the details of the experiments which you and Teddy were making at Gunnersbury. But I refused. Ah! how that hell-fiend tortured me day after day!
“She nearly drove me mad by those fearful ordeals which, in a hundred ways, she put upon me—always promising to release me if I would but reveal details of what we had discovered. But I refused—refused always, Claude—because I knew that she was an enemy, and victory must be ours if I remained silent. Days—those terrible days—passed—so many that I lost count of them—yet I knew that the woman with the cruel eyes of a leopard had dosed me with some drug that sapped my senses, and she held me irrevocably in her power, prompted no doubt by somebody who meant to work evil also upon you. In the end I must have lost my reason. I think she must have given me certain drugs in order to confuse me as to the past. Then, one day, I found myself in the town of Grantham, inquiring for the station. I was in a maid’s clothes, and in them I eventually returned to you. And you—Claude—you know all the rest.” And she burst into a torrent of tears.