Sir Charles was excited and angry. He was in bitter revolt against circ.u.mstances.

"Do you intend to show this letter to Lady d.y.k.e's relatives?" asked Bruce, at a loss for the time to discuss the situation coherently.

"I do not know. What would you advise? I trust fully to your judgment.

But is it not better to obey her wishes?--to forget, as she puts it?"

"We must decide nothing hastily. I am perplexed beyond endurance by this business. There is so much that is wildly impossible in its irreconcilable features. I must have time. Will you give me a copy of the letter?"

"Certainly, keep it yourself. We have all seen it."

"Thank you." Bruce placed the envelope and its contents in his pocket-book. Then, turning to the detective, he said:

"Now, Mr. White, do me a favor. Do not worry Mrs. Hillmer until you hear from me."

"By all means, Mr. Bruce. But am I to report to the Commissioner that Lady d.y.k.e has been found, or has, at any rate, explained that she is not dead?"

"There is no immediate necessity why a report of any kind should be made."

"None."

"Then leave matters where they are at present."

"But why," put in Sir Charles. "Is it not better to end all inquiries, at least so far as my wife is concerned? It is her desire, and, I may add, my own, now that I know something of her fate."

"Of course, if you wish it, d.y.k.e, I have no valid objection."

"Oh, no, no. Do not look at it in that way. I leave the ultimate decision entirely to you."

"In that case, I recommend complete silence in all quarters at present."

The detective left them, and as he pa.s.sed out into Victoria Street his philosophy could find but one comprehensive dictum. "This _is_ a rum go," he muttered, unconsciously plagiarizing himself on many previous occasions.

The baronet sat down, and meditatively chewed the handle of his umbrella.

"What is this nonsense Mensmore's sister talked about being responsible for my wife's death?" he said.

"I do not pretend to understand," answered Bruce. "Little more than a week ago she learned for the first time of your wife's supposed murder.

Of that I am quite positive. She feared that her brother was implicated, and, without trusting me with the reasons for her belief, took the measures she thought best to safeguard him."

"Took measures! What?" Sir Charles jerked the words out impetuously.

"She followed him to the South of France, and found him in Florence.

What she said I cannot guess, but the result was their visit here to-night. During our interview it came out, quite by accident, that some furniture was taken from her place to her brother's on the morning of November 7, thus shifting the venue of Lady d.y.k.e's death--or imaginary death I must now say--from No. 12 Raleigh Mansions to No. 61. This discovery was as startling to Mrs. Hillmer as to us, for she forthwith protested that the whole affair arose from her fault, and practically asked the detective to arrest her on the definite charge of murder."

"Pooh! The mania of an hysterical woman!"

"Possibly!"

"Why 'possibly'? No one was murdered in her abode. Do you for a moment believe the monstrous insinuation?"

"No, not in that sense. But her brother was about to make some revelation regarding a third person when she appealed to him not to speak. What would have happened finally I do not know. At that critical moment my servant announced your arrival."

"But what can Mrs. Hillmer have to conceal? She and her brother have been lost to Society since long before my marriage. Neither of them, so far as I know, has ever set eyes on my wife during the last seven years."

"Yet Mrs. Hillmer _must_ have had some powerful motive in acting as she did."

"Is it not more than likely that she had a bad attack of nerves?"

"A woman who merely yields to nervous prostration behaves foolishly.

This woman gave way to emotion, it is true, but it was strength, not weakness, that sustained her."

"What do you mean?"

"There is but one force that sustains in such a crisis--the power of love. Mrs. Hillmer was not flying from consequences. She met them half-way in the spirit of a martyr."

"'Pon my honor, Bruce, I am beginning to think that this wretched business is affecting your usually clear brain. You are accepting fancies as facts."

"Maybe. I confess I am unable to form a logical conclusion to-night."

"Why not abandon the whole muddle to time? There is no solution of a difficulty like the almanac. Let us both go off somewhere."

"What, and leave Mrs. Hillmer to die of sheer pain of mind? Let this unfortunate fellow, Mensmore, suffer no one knows what consequences from the events of to-day? It is out of the question."

"Very well, I leave it to you. Every one seems to forget that it is I who suffer most." The baronet stood up and dejectedly gazed into the fire.

"I, at least, can feel for you, d.y.k.e," said Bruce sympatherically, "but you must admit that things cannot be allowed to remain in their present whirlpool."

"So be it. Let them go on to their bitter end. If my wife was tired of my society she might at least have got rid of me in an easier manner."

With this trite reflection Sir Charles quitted his friend's house.

Bruce sat motionless for a long time. Then, as his mind became calmer, he lit a cigar, took out the doubly mysterious letter, and examined it in every possible way, critically and microscopically.

There could be no doubt that it was a genuine production. The condition of the ink bore out the correctness of the date, and the fact that the note paper and envelope were not of Continental style was not very material.

It did not appear to have been enclosed in another envelope, as the writer implied, for the purpose of being re-posted in London. Rather did the slightly frayed edges give rise to the a.s.sumption that it had been carried in some one's pocket before postage. But this theory was vague and undemonstrable.

The handwriting was Lady d.y.k.e's; the style, allowing for the strange conditions under which it was written, was hers; yet Bruce did not believe in it.

Nothing could shake his faith in the one solid, concrete certainty that stood out from a maze of contradictions and mystery--Lady d.y.k.e was dead, and buried in a pauper's grave at Putney.

At last, wearied with thought and theorizing, he went to bed; but Smith sat up late to regale his partner with the full, true, and particular narrative of the "lydy a-cryin' on her knees, and the strange gent lookin' as though he would like to murder Mr. White."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE HANDWRITING