Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/222

 'Now what is your opinion, dear? Has Lionel Eastwell been here to-night, do you really think?'

Her pale lips compressed, and her eyes narrowed at my words. I saw that she was unnerved and trembling.

'Yes,' she whispered at last. 'Yes—Claude—I believe he has been here!'

'Then he's not our friend, as we have so foolishly believed—eh?'

She drew a long breath, and gazed about the room as though utterly mystified.

'I—I never suspected this!' was her low reply. 'But'

'But what? Tell me, darling. Do tell me,' I begged.

'But he may be acting in conjunction with that woman in some desperate plot against us!'

'I believe he is,' I declared. 'I believe that whatever has happened to you, and my accident also, are both the result of cunning and dastardly plots directed by this man who has so long posed as our friend. Have you never suspected it?' I asked of her.

'Never—until to-night,' was her reply. 'But if he has dared to come here in order to assist that woman, then his action places an entirely fresh complexion upon the whole affair.'

'My opinion is that Lionel Eastwell has, all along, suspected that we have perfected our invention, and has formed a most clever and desperate plot to possess himself of our secret, in order to transmit it to Germany,' I declared, as I held her hand tenderly in mine.

'Yes,' she replied, sighing after a pause. 'Your surmise may be correct, Claude.'