"You"re not speaking the truth, Stafford." She put her hand on his arm.
"Stafford, is there any news of my father?"
He looked at her, and she saw the pain in his face.
"Why don"t you wait a little while, and I"ll tell you all the news," he said with an a.s.sumption of gaiety. "There have been several fashionable weddings----"
"Please tell me," she said, "Stafford. I"ve been for weeks under the influence of a drug, and somehow it has numbed pain, even mental pain, and perhaps you will never find me in a better condition to hear--the worst."
"The worst has happened, Maisie," he said gently.
"He has been arrested?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"No, dear, worse than that."
"Not--not suicide?" she said between her set teeth.
Again he shook his head. "He is dead," he said softly.
"Dead!"
There was a long silence which he did not break.
"Dead!" she said again. "How?"
"He was shot by--we think it was by a member of the Boundary Gang, a man named Raoul."
She looked up at him.
"I have never heard my father speak of him."
"He was a man imported from France, according to our theory."
"And was he captured?"
"He was killed too," said Stafford; "he was caught in the act and instantly executed."
"By whom?" she asked.
"By Jack o" Judgment," replied Stafford.
"Jack o" Judgment!" She breathed the words. "And I--I never thanked him!
I never knew!"
He told her the story step by step of the discovery which the police had made and the theories they had formed.
"He was lured there," said the girl.
She did not cry. She seemed incapable of tears.
"He was lured there and murdered, and Jack o" Judgment slew his murderer? Poor father! Poor, dear daddy!"
And then the tears came.
Half an hour later he left her in charge of the nurse and went back to Scotland Yard to report.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GANG FUND
The news of the girl"s escape had been received in another quarter.
Colonel Boundary had sat in his favourite chair and listened without comment to Pinto"s halting explanation.
"Oh, they went out of the window and down a ladder, did they?" said the colonel sarcastically when the Portuguese had finished, "and you had a fit on the mat, I suppose? Well, that"s a h.e.l.l of a fine story! And what did you do? You who were plastered all over with guns? Couldn"t you shoot?"
"Did you shoot when you saw Jack o" Judgment?" said the other sullenly.
"It is no good your telling me what I ought to do."
"Maybe it isn"t," said the colonel. "Well, there"s nothing to do now, anyway. The girl"s gone, and all your fine plans have come unstuck."
"They weren"t my plans," said Pinto indignantly, "it was your scheme throughout."
The colonel bit off the end of his cigar and contemplated the ceiling reflectively.
"We can only wait and see what will happen," he said. "The odds are all in favour of our being raided."
Pinto went pale.
"Yes," said the colonel, talking to himself, "I guess this is our last day of freedom. Well, Pinto, I hope you can pick oak.u.m."
"Oh, shut up about oak.u.m," growled the other; "it isn"t a joke."
"It is not a joke," said the colonel, "and if it is, it is one of those jokes that make people laugh the most. And do you know the kind of joke that makes people laugh the most, Pinto? It is when somebody gets hurt; and we are the people who are going to get hurt."
"Do you think she"ll tell the police?"
"It is extremely likely," said the colonel; "in fact, it is extremely unlikely that she won"t tell the police. I am rather glad I"m out of it."
Pinto leaped up.
"You"re out of it!" he shouted. "You"re in it up to the neck!"
The colonel shook his head.