an allusion to neuralgia, but Beatrice was not
quite satisfied. Why did this man want the key of a certain desk, and
why did he require a bundle of papers in a blue envelope therefrom?
Beatrice resolved to be on her guard.

"I will do what I can for you," she said. "If you can come and see me."

"I am afraid that is impossible," said Sartoris, who had lapsed into his
bland manner once more. "I am sensitive of people's remarks and all that
kind of thing. I dare say you will think that I am morbidly
self-conscious, but then I have not always been a cripple. I was as
straight as yourself once. Fancy a little crooked figure like me in a
hansom cab!"

Beatrice started violently. The words had recalled a painful time to
her. She recollected now with vivid force that on the night of Sir
Charles's disappearance a little crooked man in a hansom cab had been
the directing party in the outrage.

The girl's instinct had led her swiftly to the truth. She felt, as sure
as if she had been told, that this man before her was at the bottom of
this business. She knew that she stood face to face with the man who had
stolen the body of Sir Charles Darryll. For a moment Beatrice fought
hard with the feeling that she was going to faint. Her eyes dilated and
she looked across at the man opposite. He was lying back in his chair
feasting his eyes upon her beauty, so that the subtle change in the
girl's face was not lost upon him.

"I seem to have alarmed you about something," he said. "What was it?
Surely the spectacle of a crooked little man like me in a hansom cab is
not so dreadful as all that. And yet those words must have touched upon
a chord somewhere."

"It--it recalled my father to me," Beatrice stammered. "The police found
certain things out. They discovered the night my father disappeared that
outside the hotel was a black hansom cab with a man inside who was a
cripple."

"You don't mean to say that!" Sartoris cried.

In his turn he had almost betrayed himself. He could have cursed himself
aloud now. As it was, he forced an unsteady smile to his lips.

"I mean to say that the police are very clever at that kind of thing,"
he went on. "But surely you would not possibly identify me or my remark
with the monster in question! There are a great many people in this big
London of ours who would answer to that description. Now tell me, did
the police find anything more out?"

The question was eager, despite the fact that Sartoris i