Quick on the heels of the footman’s stammered explanation came the voice of Sir Charles himself:

“Sorry to disturb you, Bruce, if you are busy, but I must see you for a moment on a matter of the utmost importance.”

There was that in his utterance which betokened great excitement. He was not visible to the occupants of the room. During the audible silence that followed his words, they could hear him stamping about the passage, impatiently awaiting Bruce’s presence.

Mrs. Hillmer quietly collapsed on the floor. She had fainted.

The barrister rushed out, calling for Mrs. Smith, and responding to Sir Charles Dyke’s proffered statement as to the reason for his presence by the startling cry:

“Wait a bit, Dyke. There’s a lady in a faint inside. We must attend to her at once.”

Mrs. Smith, fortunately, was at hand, and with the help of her ministrations, Mrs. Hillmer gradually regained her senses.

After a whispered colloquy with White, the barrister said to Mensmore:

“You must remove your sister to her residence as quickly as possible. She is far too highly strung to bear any further questioning to-night. Perhaps to-morrow, when you and she have discussed matters fully together, you may be able to send for us and clear up this wretched business.”

For answer Mensmore silently pressed his hand. With the help of the housekeeper he led his sister from the room, passing Sir Charles Dyke in the hall. The baronet politely turned aside, and Mensmore did not look at him, being far too engrossed with his sister to pay heed to aught else at the moment. As for Mrs. Hillmer, she was in such a state of collapse as to be practically unconscious of her surroundings.

She managed to murmur at the door:

“Where are you taking me to, Bertie?”

“Home, dear.”

“Home? Oh, thank Heaven!”

They all heard her, and even the detective was constrained to say:

“Poor thing, she needn’t have been afraid. She is suffering for some one else.”

Sir Charles Dyke grasped Bruce’s arm.

“What on earth is going on?” he said.

“Merely a foolish woman worrying herself about others,” replied Bruce grimly.

“But those people were my old friends, Mensmore and his sister?”

“Yes.”

“What are they doing here?”

“Mensmore has been brought back to London by Mrs. Hillmer to face the allegations made against him with regard to your wife’s disappearance. They came here by their own appointment, and—”

“Did I not tell you that this charge against Mensmore was wild folly on the face of it?”

“So it seems, when we have just discovered that your wife was killed in his sister’s house, and Mrs. Hillmer persists in declaring that she was responsible for the crime.”

“Look here, Bruce. Don’t lose your head like everybody else mixed up in this wretched business. My wife is not dead.”

“What!” The cry was a double one, for both Bruce and White gave simultaneous utterance to their amazement.

“It is true. She is alive all the time. I have had a letter from her.”

“A letter. Surely, Dyke—”

“I am neither mad nor drunk. The letter reached me by this morning’s post. I came here with it as fast as I could travel. I have been in the train all day, and am nearly fainting from hunger.”

“Where is it?” cried White. “Is it genuine?”

“I could swear to her writing amidst a thousand letters. Here it is. I have brought some old correspondence of hers for the purpose of comparison, as I could hardly believe my eyes when I first received it.”

Bruce was so dumfounded by this remarkable development that he could but mutely take the document produced by the baronet and read it.

He himself recognized Lady Dyke’s handwriting, which he had often seen—a clear, bold, well-defined script, more like the caligraphy of a banker than of a fashionable lady.

The letter was dated February 1, bore no other superscription, and read as follows:

The barrister carefully refolded the sheet after scrutinizing the water-mark against the light, and noting that the paper was British made; he then examined the envelope. The obliterating postmark was “London, February 4, 9 P.M., West Strand.” The office of delivery was “Wensley, February 6.”

“Posted at the West Strand Post-Office on Saturday,” he said. “Detained in London all Sunday, and delivered to you this morning in the North.”

“Exactly.”

“It was written three days earlier, if the date be accurate. So the writer is somewhere in Europe.”

“That’s how I take it,” said Sir Charles.

“Unless the whole thing is a fraud.”

“How can it be a fraud? I am sure as to the handwriting. Why, even yourself, Bruce, must have a good recollection of my wife’s style.”

“Undoubtedly. No man born could swear that this was not Lady Dyke’s production.”

“Well, what are we to do?”

“And what did Mrs. Hillmer mean by kicking up that fuss when we spoke to her?” interpolated White. “I’ll take my oath that some one was killed in her house, else how comes it that a woman found in the Thames at Putney is carrying about in her head some of Mrs. Hillmer’s ironwork? I wish she hadn’t fainted just now. Why, she said herself that she was the cause of Lady Dyke’s death, and here is Lady Dyke writing to say she is alive. This business is beyond me, but Mrs. Hillmer has got to explain a good deal yet before I am done with her.”

The detective’s wrath at this check in the hunt after a criminal did not appeal to the baronet.

“You can please yourself, Mr. White, of course,” he said coldly; “but so far as I am concerned, I will respect my wife’s wishes, and let the matter rest where it is.”

“My dear fellow,” said the barrister, “such a course is impossible. Assuming that her ladyship is really alive, why did she leave you?”

“How can I tell? She herself refuses to give a reason. She apparently stated one in a letter which never reached me, as you know. She has selfishly caused me a world of suffering and misery for three long months. I refuse to be plagued in the matter further.”

Sir Charles was excited and angry. He was in bitter revolt against circumstances.

“Do you intend to show this letter to Lady Dyke’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 Dyke 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, Dyke, 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 passed 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 Dyke’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, Dyke,” 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 assumption that it had been carried in some one’s pocket before postage. But this theory was vague and undemonstrable.

The handwriting was Lady Dyke’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 Dyke 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