Then suddenly a chord snapped within her. With an effort of strength which surprised him she thrust him off, her eyes staring in horror as though she contemplated some loathsome crawling thing. That look inflamed him. He sprang forward, and as he did, the girl in the desperation of frenzy, struck at him; twice her open hand came across his face. He stepped back with a yell. Before he could reach her she had flown into the bathroom and locked the door. For fully five minutes he stood, then he turned and walked slowly across to the dressing-table, and surveyed his face in the big mirror.
“She struck me!” he said. He was as white as a sheet. Against his pale face the imprint of her hand showed lividly. “She struck me!” he said again wonderingly, and began to laugh.
For every blow, for every joint on every finger of the hand that struck the blow, she should have pain. Pain and terror. She should pray for death, she should crawl to him and clasp his feet in her agony. His breath came quicker and he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He passed out, locking the door behind him. His hand was on the key when he heard a sound and looking along the corridor, saw the door of his mother’s room open and the old woman standing in the doorway.
“Digby,” she said, and there was a vigour and command in her voice which made him frown. “I want you!” she said imperatively, and in amazement he obeyed her.
She had gone back to her chair when he came into the room.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Shut the door and sit down.”
He stared at her dumbfounded. Not for a year had she dared address him in that tone.
“What the devil do you mean by ordering me—” he began.
“Sit down,” she said quietly, and then he understood.
“So, you old devil, the dope is in you!”
“Sit down, my love child,” she sneered. “Sit down, Digby Estremeda! I want to speak to you.”
His face went livid.
“You—you—” he gasped.
“Sit down. Tell me what you have done with my property.”
He obeyed her slowly, looking at her as though he could not believe the evidence of his ears.
“What have you done with my property?” she asked again. “Like a fool I gave you a Power of Attorney. How have you employed it? Have you sold—” she was looking at him keenly.
He was surprised into telling the truth.
“They have put an embargo—or some such rubbish—on the sale.”
She nodded.
“I hoped they would,” she said. “I hoped they would!”
“You hoped they would?” he roared, getting up.
Her imperious hand waved him down again. He passed his hand over his eyes like a man in a dream. She was issuing orders; this old woman whom he had dominated for years, and he was obeying meekly! He had given her the morphine to quieten her, and it had made her his master.
“Why did they stop the sale?”
“Because that old lunatic Salter swears that the girl is still alive—Dorothy Danton, the baby who was drowned at Margate!”
He saw a slow smile on her lined face and wondered what was amusing her.
“She is alive!” she said.
He could only glare at her in speechless amazement.
“Dorothy Danton alive?” he said. “You’re mad, you old fool! She’s gone beyond recall—dead—dead these twenty years!”
“And what brought her back to life, I wonder?” mused the old woman? “How did they know she was Dorothy? Why, of course you brought her back!” She pointed her skinny finger at her son. “You brought her, you are the instrument of your own undoing, my boy!” she said derisively. “Oh, you poor little fool—you clever fool!”
Now he had mastered himself.
“You will tell me all there is to be told, or, by God, you’ll be sorry you ever spoke at all,” he breathed.
“You marked her. That is why she has been recognized—you marked her!”
“I marked her?”
“Don’t you remember, Digby,” she spoke rapidly and seemed to find a joy in the hurt she was causing, “a tiny baby and a cruel little beast of a boy who heated a sixpence and put it on the baby’s wrist?”
It came back to him instantly. He could almost hear the shriek of his victim. A summer day and a big room full of old furniture. The vision of a garden through an open window and the sound of the bees … a small spirit-lamp where he had heated the coin. …
“My God!” said Digby, reeling back. “I remember!”
He stared at the mocking face of his mother for a second, then turned and left the room. As he did so, there came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Swiftly he turned into his own room and ran to the window.
One glance at the street told him all that he wanted to know. He saw Jim and old Salter … there must have been a dozen detectives with them.
The door would hold for five minutes, and there was time to carry out his last plan.
XXXIII
A minute later he appeared in Eunice Weldon’s room. “I want you,” he said, and there was a sinister look in his eye that made the girl cower back from him in fear that she could not master. “My dear,” he said with that smile of his, “you need not be afraid, your friends are breaking into the house and in half an hour you will be free. What I intend doing to you is to put you in such a condition that you will not be able to give information against me until I am clear of this house. No, I am not going to kill you,” he almost laughed, “and if you are not sensible
