Amusement Only Part 6

"Hereward, did--did the accident affect you mentally?"

"How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my mental organization is of steel?"

"But you look so well?"

"Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me, darling, did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your arm? If he did, I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet."

The d.u.c.h.ess seemed positively to shrink from her better-half's near neighbourhood:

"Hereward, was it a Pickford's van?"

The Duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be:

"Was what a Pickford's van?"

The lady turned to Mr. Dacre. In her voice there was a ring of anguish:

"Mr. Dacre, tell me, was it a Pickford's van?"

Ivor could only imitate his relative's repet.i.tion of her inquiry:

"I don't quite catch you--was what a Pickford's van?"

The d.u.c.h.ess clasped her hands in front of her: "What is it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to hide? I implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do not keep me any longer in suspense; you do not know what I already have endured. Mr. Dacre, is my husband mad?"

One need scarcely observe that the lady's amazing appeal to Mr. Dacre as to her husband's sanity was received with something like surprise.

As the Duke continued to stare at her, a dreadful fear began to loom upon his brain:

"My darling, your brain is unhinged!"

He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his unmistakable distress, she shrank away from him:

"Hereward--don't touch me. How is it that I missed you? Why did you not wait until I came?"

"Wait until you came?"

The Duke's bewilderment increased.

"Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that was all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending for me like that."

"I sent for you--I?" The Duke's tone was grave. "My darling, perhaps you had better come upstairs."

"Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I should come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me that?"

The d.u.c.h.ess held out something to the Duke. He took it. It was a card--his own visiting-card. Something was written on the back of it.

He read aloud what was written:

"'Mabel, come to me at once with bearer. They tell me that they cannot take me home.' It looks like my own writing."

"Looks like it! It is your writing."

"It looks like it--and written with a shaky pen."

"My dear child, one's hand would shake at such a moment as that."

"Mabel, where did you get this?"

"It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson's."

"Who brought it?"

"Who brought it? Why, the man you sent."

"The man I sent?" A light burst upon the Duke's brain. He fell back a pace. "It's the decoy!"

Her Grace echoed the words:

"The decoy?"

"The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor, innocent darling, did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did he cut off your hair?"

"Cut off my hair?"

Her Grace put her hand up to her head as if to make sure that her hair was there.

"Where did he take you to?"

"He took me to Draper's Buildings."

"Draper's Buildings?"

"I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was Draper's Buildings. Isn't that near the Stock Exchange?"

"Near the Stock Exchange?"

It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnapped victim.

The man's audacity!

"He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford's van--was it a Pickford's van?"

"No, it was not a Pickford's van. Mabel, were you in Draper's Buildings when you wrote that letter?"

"Wrote what letter?"

"Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a word in it which will not be branded on my brain until I die."

"Hereward! What do you mean?"

"Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have forgotten it already?"