A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the Duke as if she, all at once, were half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of enquiry. Her voice was tremulously anxious:
"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 Duchess 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 repetition of her inquiry:
"I don't quite catch you--was what a Pickford's van?"
The Duchess 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 Duchess 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?"
He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication. She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with a little gasp.
"Hereward, if you don't mind, I think I'll take a chair." She took a chair. "Whatever--whatever's this?" As she read the letter the varying expressions which passed across her face were, in themselves, a study in psychology. "Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any conceivable circumstances, I could have written such a letter as this?"
"Mabel!"
She rose to her feet, with emphasis:
"Hereward, don't say that you thought this came from me!"
"Not come from you?" He remembered Knowles's diplomatic reception of the epistle on its first appearance. "I suppose that you will say next that this is not a lock of your hair?"
"My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet? This a lock of my hair! Why, it's not in the least like my hair!"
Which was certainly inaccurate. As far as color was concerned it was an almost perfect match. The Duke turned to Mr. Dacre.
"Ivor, I've had to go through a good deal this afternoon. If I have to go through much more, something will crack!" He touched his forehead. "I think it's my turn to take a chair." He also took a chair. Not the one which the Duchess had vacated, but one which faced it. He stretched out his legs in front of him; he thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets; he said, in a tone which was not only gloomy but absolutely gruesome:
"Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnapped?"
"Kidnapped?"
"The word I used was 'kidnapped.' But I will spell it if you like. Or I will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning."
The Duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor:
"Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward's brain?"
The Duke took the words out of his cousin's mouth:
"On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don't know if you are under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford's van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run over by a Pickford's van. So far as I am concerned there has been no accident. Dismiss that delusion from your mind."
"Oh!"
"You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry. But may I now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper's Buildings?"
"Did! I looked for you!"
"Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item in your programme?"