Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 25).djvu/222

believed it? Of all the amazing things, your friend Vandeleur's penetration is the greatest. We both saw her with our own eyes, and yet it wasn't my wife. Come into my study," he continued; "I believe I can throw light on this most extraordinary affair. Hubert's unlooked-for return puts the whole thing into a nutshell. I have a strange tale to tell you."

"First, may I ask one question?" I interrupted. "Where is Madame Sara?"

He spread out his hands with a significant gesture.

"Gone," he said. "How, when, and where I do not know. We thought she had retired for the night. She did not appear this morning. She has vanished, leaving no address behind her."

"Just like her," I could not help saying. "Now I will listen to your story."

"I will try to put it in as few words as possible. It is a deep thing, and discloses a plot the malignity of which could scarcely be equalled.

"Violet and Hubert made the acquaintance of Madame Sara a few months before Violet's marriage. You know Madame's power of fascination. She won Violet's affections, and as to Hubert, she had such complete influence over him that he would do anything in the world she wished. We were surprised at his determination to go to Australia before his sister's wedding, but it now turns out that he was forced to go by Madame herself, who assured him that he could be of the utmost assistance to her in a special matter of business. This was explained to Violet and to me fully; but what we were not told was that he took with him Madame's own special servant, an Arabian of the name of Achmed, the cleverest man, Hubert said, he had ever met. In his absence Madame rented his house for at least a year. All this sounds innocent enough; but listen.

"Very shortly after her marriage Violet began to receive letters from Hubert, dated from various stations in Australia, demanding money. These demands were couched in such terms as to terrify the poor child. She sent him what she could from her own supplies, but he was insatiable. At last she spoke to Madame Sara. Madame immediately told her she had learnt that Hubert had made some bad companions, had got into serious scrapes, and that his debts of honour were so enormous that unless she, Violet, helped him he could never set foot in England again. The poor girl was too much ashamed to say a word to me. These letters imploring money came by almost every mail. Madame herself offered to transmit the money, and Violet, with the utmost confidence, placed large sums in her hands.

"At last the crisis arrived. A communication reached my poor girl to the effect that unless she paid between two and three thousand pounds in notes in a couple of days Hubert in his despair would certainly take his life. She was well aware of his somewhat reckless character. Hence her request to you to sell the bonds. Shortly afterwards the Persian arrived here, and Madame, at her own request, came to spend the night. She managed to terrify Violet with a fresh story with regard to Hubert, and the child's nerves were so undermined that she believed everything.

"Well, you know the rest. You know what happened last night. But for Vandeleur's genius, where might poor Violet be now? I must tell you frankly that even I believed her guilty; I could not doubt the evidence of my own senses.

"You can judge of our amazement when Hubert walked in this morning. He looked well. He said that Madame's business was of a simple character, that he had soon put matters right for her, and after seeing what was to be seen in Australia and New Zealand came home. He was amazed when we spoke of his being in money difficulties; he had never been in any scrape at all. Only one thing he could not understand—why, Violet never answered his letters. He wrote to her about every second mail, and, as a rule, gave his letters to the Arabian to post. There is no doubt that Achmed destroyed them and wrote others on his own account.

"Well, Druce, what do you say? The motive? Oh, of course, the motive was the bloodstone. The woman knew probably for months that it was coming to England, and that I, in my official position, would invite the Persian here. She wanted it, goodness knows for what, and was determined to have a long chain of evidence against poor Violet in order to cover her own theft. Druce, we must find that woman. She cannot possibly be at large any longer."

The desire to find Madame was in all our minds, but how to accomplish it was a question which I for one did not dare to answer.