Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/294

 loathing while she touched them, Lahleet swept the papers from behind her and thrust them through the bars, then watched with concern and compassion while he read.

And to think that he did not love her but another—a woman not worth him—not like him—who would disappoint him now and always disappoint him.

And if she, Lahleet, saved him? Why, he might turn from the other woman and fix his eyes on her.

"But it wasn't Count Ulric who was killed," Harrington broke out, looking up from the pages of the Blade. "That beast dead, with his face turned up in the bushes, merely looked like Ulric. The complaint doesn't say I killed Ulric. It says a 'person unknown.' I thought it was Ulric, all right, till I ran onto him that same night at Boland's."

"Oh!" gasped Lahleet, mind harking back to a fact she had learned in the last few hours. "And did he tell you that he had been out on the inlet in a motorboat that afternoon?"

"No!" answered Harrington, surprised. "Was he? How did you know?"

But Lahleet only smiled inscrutably and shrugged her small shoulders as if it did not matter anyway. Henry after a second didn't appear to think it mattered either. "I expect Miss Boland this morning," he announced, as if her coming would settle all things.

"You have heard from her?" she asked quickly, though making a magnificent effort to be casual.

"No; not heard from her, no; not exactly," explained Henry honestly. "But I expect her. These calumnies, if nothing else, will bring her," he announced, crushing the papers in his hand.