'Marjorie Lindon!'

'Marjorie Lindon?'

Lessingham paused. He was evidently asking himself what the inquiry meant.

'I have not seen Miss Lindon since last night. Why do you ask?'

'Then Heaven help us!-As I'm a living man I believe he, she, or it has got her!'

His words were incomprehensible enough to stand in copious need of explanation,-as Mr Lessingham plainly thought.

'What is it that you mean, sir?'

'What I say,-I believe that that Oriental friend of yours has got her in her clutches,-if it is a "her;" goodness alone knows what the infernal conjurer's real s.e.x may be.'

'Atherton!-Explain yourself!'

On a sudden Lessingham's tones rang out like a trumpet call.

'If damage comes to her I shall be fit to cut my throat,-and yours!'

Mr Lessingham's next proceeding surprised me,-I imagine it surprised Atherton still more. Springing at Sydney like a tiger, he caught him by the throat.

'You-you hound! Of what wretched folly have you been guilty? If so much as a hair of her head is injured you shall repay it me ten thousandfold!-You mischief-making, intermeddling, jealous fool!'

He shook Sydney as if he had been a rat,-then flung him from him headlong on to the floor. It reminded me of nothing so much as Oth.e.l.lo's treatment of Iago. Never had I seen a man so transformed by rage. Lessingham seemed to have positively increased in stature. As he stood glowering down at the prostrate Sydney, he might have stood for a materialistic conception of human retribution.

Sydney, I take it, was rather surprised than hurt. For a moment or two he lay quite still. Then, lifting his head, he looked up his a.s.sailant. Then, raising himself to his feet, he shook himself,- as if with a view of learning if all his bones were whole. Putting his hands up to his neck, he rubbed it, gently. And he grinned.

'By G.o.d, Lessingham, there's more in you than I thought. After all, you are a man. There's some holding power in those wrists of yours,-they've nearly broken my neck. When this business is finished, I should like to put on the gloves with you, and fight it out. You're clean wasted upon politics,-d.a.m.n it, man, give me your hand!'

Mr Lessingham did not give him his hand. Atherton took it,-and gave it a hearty shake with both of his.

If the first paroxysm of his pa.s.sion had pa.s.sed, Lessingham was still sufficiently stern.

'Be so good as not to trifle, Mr Atherton. If what you say is correct, and the wretch to whom you allude really has Miss Lindon at her mercy, then the woman I love-and whom you also pretend to love!-stands in imminent peril not only of a ghastly death, but of what is infinitely worse than death.'

'The deuce she does!' Atherton wheeled round towards me. 'Champnell, haven't you got that dashed hat of yours yet? Don't stand there like a tailor's dummy, keeping me on tenter-hooks,- move yourself! I'll tell you all about it in the cab.-And, Lessingham, if you'll come with us I'll tell you too.'

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

WHAT THE TIDINGS WERE

Three in a hansom cab is not, under all circ.u.mstances, the most comfortable method of conveyance,-when one of the trio happens to be Sydney Atherton in one of his 'moments of excitement' it is distinctly the opposite; as, on that occasion, Mr Lessingham and I both quickly found. Sometimes he sat on my knees, sometimes on Lessingham's, and frequently, when he unexpectedly stood up, and all but precipitated himself on to the horse's back, on n.o.body's. In the eagerness of his gesticulations, first he knocked off my hat, then he knocked off Lessingham's, then his own, then all three together,-once, his own hat rolling into the mud, he sprang into the road, without previously going through the empty form of advising the driver of his intention, to pick it up. When he turned to speak to Lessingham, he thrust his elbow into my eye; and when he turned to speak to me, he thrust it into Lessingham's. Never, for one solitary instant, was he at rest, or either of us at ease. The wonder is that the gymnastics in which he incessantly indulged did not sufficiently attract public notice to induce a policeman to put at least a momentary period to our progress. Had speed not been of primary importance I should have insisted on the transference of the expedition to the somewhat wider limits of a four-wheeler.

His elucidation of the causes of his agitation was apparently more comprehensible to Lessingham than it was to me. I had to piece this and that together under considerable difficulties. By degrees I did arrive at something like a clear notion of what had actually taken place.

He commenced by addressing Lessingham,-and thrusting his elbow into my eye.

'Did Marjorie tell you about the fellow she found in the street?' Up went his arm to force the trap-door open overhead,-and off went my hat. 'Now then, William Henry!-let her go!-if you kill the horse I'll buy you another!'

We were already going much faster than, legally, we ought to have done,-but that, seemingly to him was not a matter of the slightest consequence. Lessingham replied to his inquiry.

'She did not.'

'You know the fellow I saw coming out of your drawing-room window?'

'Yes.'

'Well, Marjorie found him the morning after in front of her breakfast-room window-in the middle of the street. Seems he had been wandering about all night, unclothed,-in the rain and the mud, and all the rest of it,-in a condition of hypnotic trance.'

'Who is the--gentleman you are alluding to?'

'Says his name's Holt, Robert Holt.'

'Holt?-Is he an Englishman?'

'Very much so,-City quill-driver out of a shop,-stony broke absolutely! Got the chuck from the casual ward,-wouldn't let him in,-house full, and that sort of thing,-poor devil! Pretty pa.s.ses you politicians bring men to!'

'Are you sure?'

'Of what?'

'Are you sure that this man, Robert Holt, is the same person whom, as you put it, you saw coming out of my drawing-room window?'

'Sure!-Of course I'm sure!-Think I didn't recognise him?- Besides, there was the man's own tale,-owned to it himself,- besides all the rest, which sent one rushing Fulham way.'

'You must remember, Mr Atherton, that I am wholly in the dark as to what has happened. What has the man, Holt, to do with the errand on which we are bound?'

'Am I not coming to it? If you would let me tell the tale in my own way I should get there in less than no time, but you will keep on cutting in,-how the deuce do you suppose Champnell is to make head or tail of the business if you will persist in interrupting? -Marjorie took the beggar in,-he told his tale to her,-she sent for me-that was just now; caught me on the steps after I had been lunching with Dora Grayling. Holt re-dished his yarn-I smelt a rat-saw that a connection possibly existed between the thief who'd been playing confounded conjuring tricks off on to me and this interesting party down Fulham way-'

'What party down Fulham way?'

'This friend of Holt's-am I not telling you? There you are, you see,-won't let me finish! When Holt slipped through the window- which is the most sensible thing he seems to have done; if I'd been in his shoes I'd have slipped through forty windows!-dusky coloured charmer caught him on the hop,-doctored him-sent him out to commit burglary by deputy. I said to Holt, "Show us this agreeable little crib, young man." Holt was game-then Marjorie chipped in-she wanted to go and see it too. I said, "You'll be sorry if you do,"-that settled it! After that she'd have gone if she'd died,-I never did have a persuasive way with women. So off we toddled, Marjorie, Holt, and I, in a growler,-spotted the crib in less than no time,-invited ourselves in by the kitchen window -house seemed empty. Presently Holt became hypnotised before my eyes,-the best established case of hypnotism by suggestion I ever yet encountered-started off on a pilgrimage of one. Like an idiot I followed, leaving Marjorie to wait for me-'

'Alone?'

'Alone!-Am I not telling you?-Great Scott, Lessingham, in the House of Commons they must be hazy to think you smart! I said, "I'll send the first sane soul I meet to keep you company." As luck would have it, I never met one,-only kids, and a baker, who wouldn't leave his cart, or take it with him either. I'd covered pretty nearly two miles before I came across a peeler,-and when I did the man was cracked-and he thought me mad, or drunk, or both. By the time I'd got myself within nodding distance of being run in for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, without inducing him to move a single one of his twenty-four-inch feet, Holt was out of sight. So, since all my pains in his direction were clean thrown away, there was nothing left for me but to scurry back to Marjorie,-so I scurried, and I found the house empty, no one there, and Marjorie gone.'

'But, I don't quite follow-'

Atherton impetuously declined to allow Mr Lessingham to conclude.

'Of course you don't quite follow, and you'll follow still less if you will keep getting in front. I went upstairs and downstairs, inside and out-shouted myself hoa.r.s.e as a crow-nothing was to be seen of Marjorie,-or heard; until, as I was coming down the stairs for about the five-and-fiftieth time, I stepped on something hard which was lying in the pa.s.sage. I picked it up,-it was a ring; this ring. Its shape is not just what it was,-I'm not as light as gossamer, especially when I come jumping downstairs six at a time,-but what's left of it is here.'

Sydney held something in front of him. Mr Lessingham wriggled to one side to enable him to see. Then he made a s.n.a.t.c.h at it.