“Who is Madge Benson?” he demanded.
“Need you ask that?” she said. “She is my servant.”
“Why did she go to prison?”
He saw the woman’s lips close tight.
“You must promise not to ask questions about the past until I am ready to tell you, Mr. Steele,” she said, “and now I think you can see me home.” She looked round the office. “There are usually a dozen cablegrams to be seen and answered. A confidential clerk of mine comes in the morning to attend to the dispatch of wires which I leave for him. I have made myself a nuisance to every town clerk in the world, from Buenos Aires to Shanghai,” she said with a whimsical laugh in which there was a note of pain. “ ‘The shadow he pursueth—’ You know the old Biblical lines, Mr. Steele, and I am so tired of my pursuit, so very tired!”
“And is it ended now?” asked Jim.
“Not yet,” said Lady Mary, and suddenly her voice grew hard and determined. “No, we’ve still got a lot of work before us, Jim—” She used the word shyly and laughed like a child when she saw him colour. “Even Eunice will not mind my calling you Jim,” she said, “and it is such a nice name, easily remembered, and it has the advantage of not being a popular nickname for dogs and cats.”
He was dying to ask her why, if she was so well off, she had taken up her residence in a little flat overlooking a railway line, and it was probable that had he asked her, he would have received an unsatisfactory reply.
He took leave of her at her door.
“Good night, neighbour,” he smiled.
“Good night, Jim,” she said softly.
And Jim was still sitting in his big armchair pondering the events of the night when the first rays of the rising sun made a golden pattern upon the blind.
XX
Early the next morning a district messenger arrived at the flat with a letter from Eunice, and he groaned before he opened it.
She had written it in the hurt of her discovery and there were phrases which made him wince.
“I never dreamt it was you, and after all the pretence you made that this Blue Hand was a woman! It wasn’t fair of you, Jim. To secure a sensation you nearly frightened me to death on my first night here, and made me look ridiculous in order that I might fall into your waiting arms! I see it all now. You do not like Mr. Groat, and were determined that I should leave his house, and this is the method which you have followed. I shall find it very hard to forgive you and perhaps you had better not see me again until you hear from me.”
“Oh, damn,” said Jim for the fortieth time since he had left her.
What could he do? He wrote half a dozen letters and tore them all up, every one of them into shreds. He could not explain to her how the key came into his possession without betraying Lady Mary Danton’s secret. And now he would find it more difficult than ever to convince her that Digby Groat was an unscrupulous villain. The position was hopeless and he groaned again. Then a thought struck him and he crossed the landing to the next flat.
Madge Benson opened the door and this time regarded him a little more favourably.
“M’lady is asleep,” she said. She knew that Jim was aware of Mrs. Fane’s identity.
“Do you think you could wake her? It is rather important.”
“I will see,” said Madge Benson, and disappeared into the bedroom. She returned in a few moments. “Madame is awake. She heard your knock,” she said. “Will you go in?”
Lady Mary was lying on the bed fully dressed, wrapped in a dressing-gown, and she took the letter from Jim’s hand which he handed her without a word, and read.
“Have patience,” she said as she handed it back. “She will understand in time.”
“And in the meanwhile,” said Jim, his heart heavy, “anything can happen to her! This is the very thing I didn’t want to occur.”
“You went to the house. Did you discover anything?”
He shook his head.
“Take no notice and do not worry,” said Lady Mary, settling down in the bed and closing her eyes, “and now please let me sleep, Mr. Steele; I have not been to bed for twenty-four hours.”
Eunice had not dispatched the messenger with the letter to Jim five minutes before she regretted the impulse which had made her write it. She had said bitter things which she did not really feel. It was an escapade of his which ought to be forgiven, because at the back of it, she thought, was his love for her. She had further reason to doubt her wisdom, when, going into Digby Groat’s library she found him studying a large photograph.
“That is very good, considering it was taken in artificial light,” he said. It was an enlarged photograph of his laboratory door bearing the blue imprint, and so carefully had the photographer done his work, that every line and whorl of the fingertips showed.
“It is a woman’s hand, of course,” he said.
“A woman!” she gasped. “Are you sure?”
He looked up in surprise.
“Of course I’m sure,” said Digby; “look at the size of it. It is much too small for a man.”
So she had wronged Jim cruelly! And yet what was he doing there in the house? How had he got in? The whole thing was so inexplicable that she gave it up, only—she must tell Jim and ask him to forgive her.
As soon as she was free she went to the telephone. Jim was not in the office.
“Who is it speaking?” asked
