“What do you mean?” he cried, resentfully, glancing from the Earl to myself. “I know no one of that name. You are mistaken.”
“There is no mistake,” answered the great statesman, coldly, at the same time taking from an old oak bureau a large linen-lined envelope of the kind used in our Department. From a drawer he took one of his visitor’s letters, while from the envelope he drew forth a second letter. At a glance I saw that the latter was one of those mysterious missives signed “X” that had been received by my wife. Opening both, he placed them together and handed them to me without comment.
They were in the same handwriting.
“Do you deny having written that letter?” asked the Minister, sternly, at the same time showing him the note. He made a motion to take it, but suddenly drew away his hand. His lips contracted, his face grew pale, and with a gesture of feigned contempt he waved the Earl’s hand aside.
“Do you deny it?” repeated my chief.
He was still silent—his face a sufficient index to the agitation within him.
“You have endeavoured to deceive me,” continued the Earl, harshly. “You have some fixed purpose in accepting my invitation, and coming here to visit me, but you were unaware that already I had knowledge of facts you have endeavoured so cunningly to conceal. It is useless to deny that you are acquainted with Deedes’s wife, for he recognises you as having walked with her in Kensington Gardens, while I have ascertained at last who she really is—that her name was never Ella Laing.”
He started at this announcement. His lips moved, but no word escaped him.
That the Earl should have learned the true name and station of my wife apparently disconcerted him. His complexion was of ashen hue; all his arrogance had left him, for he saw himself cornered. I stood glaring at him fiercely, for was not I face to face with the man whom my wife had met times without number, concealing from me all motive or duration of her absences? Some secret had existed between them—he was the man whom she apparently feared, and whose will she had obeyed. I felt that now, at last, I should ascertain the truth, and obtain a key to the strange perplexing enigma that had held me in doubt and suspicion through so many weary months.
His shifty gaze met mine; I detected a fierce glint in his eyes.