Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/198

182 attention — a pair of strong field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?

I took them up and focussed them upon the boundary of the wood, finding that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.

"That's where they found the man who was murdered," explained the servant, who still stood in the doorway.

"I know," I replied. "I was just trying the glasses." Then I put them down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red candle-shade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon the electric table-lamp.

"Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light," explained the young woman; and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the toilet-table and the blind drawn up — whether it had ever been used as a warning of danger?

As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame, and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in a foreign military uniform — a picture that, being soiled and faded, had evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.

Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourts' flight? Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's picture missing?