Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/193

Rh sense of familiarity in that face of the dead. It smiled at him as a face he had known of old—a face out of the past. Yet it was only in the evening, when he came into the salon at the Windsor, and Mrs. Wyllard turned towards him in the lamplight, that he knew what the likeness meant. It was not an obvious or striking likeness. The resemblance was rather in expression than in feature, but one face recalled the other.

"Yes, there is a likeness," said Wyllard coldly, passing the photograph back to its owner, who rose to take leave, just as the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven.

"I shall look in to-morrow, and see if you are inclined for an afternoon at Saint-Germain," he said, as he shook hands with Dora.

"You are very kind," she said, "but your invitation is no longer tempting. You have spoiled my interest in that sweet old place. I shall always think of it as the scene of Marie Prévol's death."

"But surely that is an additional charm," said Wyllard mockingly. "If you are gifted with Mr. Heathcote's detective temper—the genius of the heaven-born police-officer—Saint-Germain will be all the more interesting to you on account of a double murder—and perhaps a suicide into the bargain; for it is not unlikely that the murderer's bones are mouldering in some gravel-pit."

"You forget Drubarde's story of the travelling-cap," said Heathcote.

"That was a shrewd hypothesis on your ex-police-officer's part, but it is by no means conclusive evidence," answered Wyllard.

Heathcote called at the Windsor upon the following afternoon, to inquire if Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard had left for Switzerland. He was shocked to hear that Mr. Wyllard had been taken seriously ill in the night, and that there had been two medical men with him that morning. Madame was terribly distressed, the waiter told him, but she bore up admirably.

Heathcote sent in his name, and was at once admitted to the salon, where Dora came to him after the briefest delay.

She was very pale, and there were signs of terror, and of grief in her countenance.

"I am glad you have come," she faltered. "I should have sent for you, only—" she hesitated, and stopped, with tears in her eyes, feeling that in another moment she might have said too much. He was her oldest friend, the man to whom her thoughts turned naturally in the hour of trouble, the man whom, of all others, she most trusted; but he was her old lover also, and she felt that never again could she dare to appeal to his friendship as she had done for Bothwell's sake.