“You’ll do, I think,” he said with a smile. “You must wait here until I come back. I am going to get some food.”
“Yes,” she answered.
He was gone twenty minutes, and on his return he saw that she had taken off her coat and had washed her hands and face. She was listlessly drying her hands when he came up the stairs. There was something pathetically childlike in her attitude, and a man who was less of a brute than Digby Groat would have succumbed to the appeal of her helplessness.
But there was no hint of pity in the thoughtful eyes that surveyed her. He was wondering whether it would be safe to give her another dose. In order to secure a quick effect he had administered more than was safe already. There might be a collapse, or a failure of heart, which would be as fatal to him as to her. He decided to wait until the effects had almost worn off.
“Eat,” he said, and she sat at the table obediently.
He had brought in cold meat, a loaf of bread, butter and cheese. He supplemented this feast with two glasses of water which he drew in the little scullery.
Suddenly she put down her knife and fork.
“I feel very tired,” she said.
So much the better, thought Digby. She would sleep now.
The back room was a bedroom. He watched her whilst she unfastened her shoes and loosened the belt of her skirt before she lay down. With a sigh, she turned over and was fast asleep before he could walk to the other side of the bed to see her face.
Digby Groat smoked for a long time over his simple meal. The girl was wholly in his power, but she could wait. A much more vital matter absorbed his attention. He himself had reached the possibility which he had long foreseen and provided against. It was not a pleasant situation, he thought, and found relief for his mind by concentrating his thoughts upon the lovely ranch in Brazil, on which, with average luck, he would spend the remainder of his days.
Presently he got up, produced from a drawer a set of shaving materials wrapped in a towel, and heating some water at the little gas-stove in the kitchen, he proceeded to divest himself of his moustache.
With the master key he unlocked the cupboard that ran the height of the room, and surveyed thoughtfully the stacks of dresses and costumes which filled the half a dozen shelves. The two top shelves were filled with boxes, and he brought out three of these and examined their contents. From one of these he took a beautiful evening gown of silver tissue, and laid it over the back of a chair. A satin wrap followed, and from another box he took white satin shoes and stockings and seemed satisfied by his choice, for he looked at them for a long time before he folded them and put them back where he had found them. His own disguise he had decided upon.
And now, having mapped out his plan, he dressed himself in a chauffeur’s uniform, and went out to the telephone.
XXXIV
“Dead! Jane Groat dead?”
To Lady Mary the news came as a shock.
Jim, gaunt and hollow-eyed, sitting listlessly by the window of Mr. Salter’s office, nodded.
“The doctors think it was an overdose of morphia that killed her,” he said shortly.
Lady Mary was silent for a long while, then:
“I think perhaps now is a moment when I can tell you something about the Blue Hand,” she said.
“Will it assist us?” asked Jim, turning quickly.
She shook her head.
“I am afraid it will not, but this I must tell you. The person against whom the Blue Hand was directed was not Digby Groat, but his mother. I have made one grave mistake recently,” she said, “and it was to believe that Digby Groat was dominated by his mother. I was amazed to discover that so far from her dominating him, she was his slave, and the only explanation I can give for this extraordinary transition is Digby Groat’s discovery that his mother was a drug-taker. Once he was strong enough to keep the drug from her the positions were reversed. The story of the Blue Hand,” she said with her sad little smile, “is neither as fantastic nor as melodramatic as you might expect.”
There was a long silence which neither of the men broke.
“I was married at a very early age, as you know.” She nodded to Salter. “My father was a very poor nobleman with one daughter and no sons, and he found it not only difficult to keep up the mortgaged estates which he had inherited, but to make both ends meet even though he was living in the most modest way. Then he met Jonathan Danton’s father, and between the two they fixed up a marriage between myself and Jonathan. I never met him until a week before my wedding-day. He was a cold, hard man, very much like his father, just to a fault, proud and stiff-necked, and to his natural hardness of demeanour was added the fretfulness due to an affected heart, which eventually killed him.
“My married life was an unhappy one. The sympathy that I sought was denied me. With all his wealth he could have made me happy, but from the first he seemed to be suspicious of me, and I have often thought that he hated me because I was a member of a class which he professed to despise. When our daughter was born I imagined that there would be a change in his attitude, but, if anything, the change was for the worse.
“I had met his sister, Jane Groat, and knew, in a vague kind of way, that some
