LITMIR.BIZ

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beside her when she went ashore.

      'I had not much to do after all,' he said, glancing at Van Torp.

      'No,' Margaret answered, 'but please don't think it was all imagination. I may tell you some day. No,' she said again, after a short pause, 'he did not make himself a nuisance, except that once, and now he has asked me to his place in Derbyshire.'

      'Torp Towers,' Griggs observed, with a smile.

      'Yes. I could hardly help laughing when he told me he had changed its name.'

      'It's worth seeing,' said Griggs. 'A big old house, all full of other people's ghosts.'

      'Ghosts?'

      'I mean figuratively. It's full of things that remind one of the people who lived there. It has one of the oldest parks in England. Lots of pheasants, too—but that cannot last long.'

      'Why not?'

      'He won't let any one shoot them! They will all die of overcrowding in two or three years. His keepers are three men from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.'

      'What a mad idea!' Margaret laughed. 'Is he a Buddhist?'

      'No.' Paul Griggs knew something about Buddhism. 'Certainly not! He's eccentric. That's all.'

      They were at the pier. Half-an-hour later they were in the train together, and there was no one else in the carriage. Miss More and little Ida had disappeared directly after landing, but Margaret had seen Mr. Van Torp get into a carriage on the window of which was pasted the label of the rich and great: 'Reserved.' She could have had the same privilege if she had chosen to ask for it or pay for it, but it irritated her that he should treat himself like a superior being. Everything he did either irritated her or frightened her, and she found herself constantly thinking of him and wishing that he would get out at the first station. Griggs was silent too, and Margaret thought he really might have taken some trouble to amuse her.

      She had Lushington's book on her knee, for she had found it less interesting than she had expected, and was rather ashamed of not having finished it before meeting him, since it had been given to her. She thought he might come down as far as Rugby to meet her, and she was quite willing that he should find her with it in her hand. A literary man is always supposed to be flattered at finding a friend reading his last production, as if he did not know that the friend has probably grabbed the volume with undignified haste the instant he was on the horizon, with the intention of being discovered deep in it. Yet such little friendly frauds are sweet compared with the extremes of brutal frankness to which our dearest friends sometimes think it their duty to go with us, for our own good.

      After a time Griggs spoke to her, and she was glad to hear his voice. She had grown to like him during the voyage, even more than she had ever thought probable. She had even gone so far as to wonder whether, if he had been twenty-five years younger, he might not have been the one man she had ever met whom she might care to marry, and she had laughed at the involved terms of the hypothesis as soon as she thought of it. Griggs had never been married, but elderly people remembered that there had been some romantic tale about his youth, when he had been an unknown young writer struggling for life as a newspaper correspondent.

      'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said, turning his grey eyes to hers.

      He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.

      'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.

      'The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,' Griggs continued. 'I should like to know what you think about it, as you were with her when she died. Have you any idea that she may have died of anything else?'

      'No.' Margaret was surprised. 'The doctor said it was that.'

      'I know. I only wanted to have your own impression. I believe that when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds. Do you remember if it was at all like that?'

      'Not at all,' Margaret said. 'She whispered the last words she spoke, but they were quite distinct. Then she drew three or four deep breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the doctor from the next room.'

      'I suppose that might be heart failure,' said Griggs thoughtfully.

       'You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?'

      'Only what?' Margaret asked with growing surprise.

      'Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the crowd.'

      'Yes, I think I am sure. What do you mean? Why do you insist so much?'

      'It's of no use to tell other people,' said Griggs, 'but you may just as well know. I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there could not have been much of a crowd.'

      'Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,' Margaret suggested.

      'Possibly. But there was another thing. When I got home I found that there was a little blood on the palm of my hand. It was the hand I had put under her waist when I lifted her.'

      'Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?' Margaret asked, opening her eyes wide.

      'There was blood on the inside of my hand,' Griggs answered, 'and I had no scratch to account for it. I know quite well that it was on the hand that I put under her waist—a little above the waist, just in the middle of her back.'

      'But it would have been seen afterwards.'

      'On the dark red silk she wore? Not if there was very little of it.

       The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound. Why should he?

       He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had

       been murdered.'

      'Murdered?'

      Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from head to foot. She had never before had such a sensation; it was like a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable. She felt it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with the dying girl's last words, 'he did it'; and with little Ida's look of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp's lips while he was talking to himself on the boat-deck of the Leofric; and again, with the physical fear of the man that always came over her when she had been near him for a little while. When she spoke to Griggs again the tone of her voice had changed.

      'Please tell me how it could have been done,' she said.

      'Easily enough. A steel bodkin six or seven inches long, or even a strong hat-pin. It would be only a question of strength.'

      Margaret remembered Mr. Van Torp's coarse hands, and shuddered again.

      'How awful!' she exclaimed.

      'One would bleed to death internally before long,' Griggs said.

      'Are you sure?'

      'Yes. That is the reason why the three-cornered blade for duelling swords was introduced in France thirty years ago. Before that, men often fought with ordinary foils filed to a point, and there were many deaths from internal hemorrhage.'

      'What odd things you always know! That would be just like being run through with a bodkin, then?'

      'Very much the same.'

      'But it would have been found out afterwards,' Margaret said, 'and the papers would have been full of it.'

      'That does not follow,' Griggs answered. 'The girl was an only child, and her mother had been divorced and married again. She lived alone with her father, and he probably was told the truth. But Isidore Bamberger is not the man to spread out his troubles before the public in the newspapers. On the contrary, if he found out that his daughter had been killed—supposing that she was—he probably made up his mind at once that the world should

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