Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/135

Rh “Colonel Menendez told me last night that he had never met Mr. Camber.”

Val Beverley shrugged her shoulders, a habit which it was easy to see she had acquired from Madame de Stämer.

“Perhaps not,” she replied, “but I am certain he hates him.”

“Hates Mr. Camber?”

“Yes.” Her expression grew troubled. “It is another of those mysteries which seem to be part of Colonel Menendez’s normal existence.”

“And is this dislike mutual?”

“That I cannot say, since I have never met Mr. Camber.”

“And Madame de Stämer, does she share it?”

“Fully, I think. But don’t ask me what it means, because I don’t know.”

She dismissed the subject with a light gesture and poured me out a second cup of coffee.

“I am going to leave you now,” she said. “I have to justify my existence in my own eyes.”

“Must you really go?”

“I must really.”

“Then tell me something before you go.”

She gathered up the bunches of roses and looked down at me with a wistful expression.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Did you detect those mysterious footsteps again last night?”

The look of wistfulness changed to another which I hated to see in her eyes, an expression of repressed fear.

“No,” she replied in a very low voice, “but why do you ask the question?”

Doubt of her had been far enough from my mind, but