CHAPTER XXXV.

THE WOMAN OF THE PORTRAIT.

The detective easily avoided the man's blind rush, the result of which was that Mr. Haines all but cannoned into Mr. Holman's niece.

Miss Hetty Johnson, however--the young lady's name was Johnson--seemed in no way disconcerted.

"That's right. Knock me down and trample on me. I don't mind. I've done nothing to nobody. But it's all the same as if I had."

Brought back by the young lady's words to a sense of reality, Mr. Haines spluttered out an apology.

"I beg your pardon. It was an accident." Then he raved at Mr. Holman. "You--you devil! You've been having me, tricking me, doing me. You cursed slippery British hound, I feel like killing you!"

He looked as he said he felt. His tall figure was drawn upright, his long arms were stretched out in front of him, his fists were clenched as in a paroxysm of rage.

Mr. Holman stared at him with stolid imperturbability.

"Perhaps, when you've quite finished, you'll tell us what's wrong."

"You know. Don't you try to play it any more off on to me, or the presence of a woman shan't save you."

"What's the matter with the man?" asked Mrs. Holman.

"Don't you hear me asking him?" chimed in her lord. "But it doesn't seem as if he cared to tell us."

As if one was not sufficient, Mr. Haines began shaking both his fists at the detective.

"You said you knew nothing about her; you told me you could not help me; you advised me to go back by the next ship. I could not make it out. Now I do catch on. You had her portrait all the time."

"Whose portrait?"

"Loo's!"

"Who's Loo?"

"My girl!"

The words came from Mr. Haines with a roar.

The detective looked at him as if he was beginning to suspect that, after all, there might be some method in his madness.

"See here, Mr. Haines, I don't know if you are or are not mad, but just try to behave as if you weren't. I've no notion what you're talking about. I tell you I know no more about your girl than I know about the man in the moon."

"You tell me that, and expect me to believe it, when you have her portrait?"

"I have her portrait! Where?"

"Here!" Striding forward, he snatched up one of the two portraits which were lying on the table. As he did so, he perceived the second. "Why, here's another! There are two! You have two portraits of my girl, and you tell me that you know nothing of her."

Although the detective's face remained impassive, a speck of light seemed all at once to come into his eyes. The pupils dilated. There was something in them which suggested that the whole man had become, upon a sudden, alert and eager.

"I would ask you, Mr. Haines, to consider carefully what you are saying. More may depend upon your words than you imagine. Do I understand you to say that you know the original of that photograph?"

"Know the original! Of course I do. It's my girl, my Loo!"

"Are you prepared to swear it?"

"I am, before God and man."

"May I ask if there is anything in particular in which the likeness consists?"

"Don't you think a father knows his daughter when he sees her in a picture? Don't talk back to me. I tell you it's my girl, my Loo! Where is she?"

"I will tell you everything in a moment, Mr. Haines. Look at those photographs closely. Don't you notice anything about them which is peculiar?"

Mr. Haines did as he was told. He peered closely at the portraits.

"She is looking pretty sick."

"Well she might do. Those photographs were taken after death?"

"After death?"

"Have you heard of the Three Bridges Tragedy?"

"The Three Bridges Tragedy? Yes."

"That is the portrait of the victim."

"The victim? So! She is dead. She was done to death. I knew it."

"The man who has been found guilty of the crime is now lying in gaol under sentence of death."

"They shan't hang him?"

"It looks uncommonly as if they would."

"I say they shan't. Not if I have to tear down the prison walls with my hands and nails to get at him. Do you think I've come all these thousands of miles to let them strangers pay the man that killed my girl? You bet I've not!"

Mr. Haines glanced at the detective as if he defied his contradiction.

The detective looked at him, in return, as if he doubted what to make of him.

While the two men were thus, as it were, taking each other's measure, Miss Hetty Johnson advanced to the table on which Mr. Haines had, perhaps unconsciously, replaced the photographs. She picked them up.

"Is this the poor girl who was murdered?" She glanced at them. As she did so she uttered a startled exclamation, "Why, it--it's Milly!" She turned to Mr. Holman all in a tremor of excitement. "Uncle, this is Milly!"

Her uncle turned to her with what almost amounted to a savage start.

"Who do you say it is? You don't mean to say that you know the original? Hanged if I don't believe everybody does except me. And here, all this time, we've been hunting the whole world to find out."

Miss Johnson was not at all affected by her uncle's display of temper. She repeated her previous assertion, and that with more emphasis than before.

"This is Milly Carroll who was with me at the theatre. I am sure of it. Aunt, you've heard me talk of Milly Carroll?"

"Often," said her aunt. "Now, Hetty, don't you let your fancy run away with you. It may be like her, and yet it mayn't be her. Remember the mischief you might do. You think before you speak."

"My dear aunt, there is not the slightest necessity for you to talk to me like that. I am sure that this is Milly Carroll. Heaps of girls at the theatre will tell you so if you ask them. It doesn't do her justice, and she looks as if she were dead, but it's her." She dropped her hand to her side, as if a startling reflection had all at once occurred to her. "I wonder if that explains it?"

"Explains what?"

"Her silence. I wondered why she had never replied to my last letter. All the time, perhaps, she was dead. And I was telling every one how unkind she was. To think of it!"

"Do you know where she lived?"

"When I last heard from her she was living at Brighton."

"Brighton? Then he did do it. What an artistic liar that man must be!"

"She left the stage for good. She was going to be married."

"Going to be married, was she? Then it's her. What was her future husband's name?"

"I never heard his name. We always took him for some big swell, she kept his name so close. She used to call him Reggie."

"Reggie? Oh! Not Tommy?"

"No, Reggie. I knew him very well by sight."

"What do you mean--you knew him very well by sight?"

"Well, I spoke to him two or three times, and, of course, he spoke to me. And I used often to see her with him. And then he was always at the theatre. He used to give her everything she wanted, and made no end of a fuss of her. The girls all envied her good luck."

"It looks as if they had cause to. What sort of party was this swell of hers to look at?"

"He was tall, and dark, and very handsome, and he had most beautiful hands, and one of the nicest-speaking voices I ever heard--and such a smile! And he dressed awfully well--he was an awful swell. Milly told me he was awfully rich, but I could see that without her telling me."

Mr. Holman had listened to the girl's description with some appearance of surprise.

"Of course you could. You girls can see anything. That's how it is so many of you come to grief--you think you see so much. You're sure you haven't made a mistake about this swell of hers? You're sure he wasn't short, and plump, and rosy?"

"He wasn't a scrap like that. He was exactly as I've told you. Short, and plump, and rosy? Indeed! I should think he wasn't."

"Would you recognise him if you saw him again?"

"Rather! I should think I should. I should know him anywhere. If you saw him once, you would never be likely to forget him, he was too good-looking."

"Was he indeed? You seem to have been more than half in love with him yourself. You girls always do fall in love with the right sort of men. Have you any of this young woman's writing?"

"I've some of her letters which she sent me."

Mr. Haines, advancing, laid his hand gently on Miss Johnson's arm.

"Will you let me see her letters--my girl's, my Loo's?"

"Of course I will. You can come round and look at them now if you like. There's time before I'm due at the theatre." The young girl looked up at the old man with a curious interest. "She was an American. She used to talk to me about a place called Colorado."

"She was raised in Colorado. And that is where she left me. So you were her friend--my girl's friend?"

"Well, we were pals."

"Pals? Yes. You were pals."

Mr. Haines looked at Miss Johnson inquiringly, searchingly, as if he was endeavouring to ascertain, by force of visual inspection, what sort of girl she was.

Mr. Holman interposed.

"When you two have done palavering, perhaps Miss Hetty Johnson will be good enough to tell me what was this young woman's address at Brighton--that is, if she happens to remember it."

"I remember it perfectly."

Miss Hetty proved that she did by unhesitatingly furnishing her uncle with the information required. Her uncle entered the address she gave him in his pocket-book. He looked at his watch.

"It's twenty minutes past seven. There's a train from Victoria to Brighton at 7.50. If I got a decent cab I ought to have time to catch it, and to spare. If I do catch it, I ought to be able to get all the information I want in time to catch the last train back to town. If I don't, I'll wire." This was to his wife. He turned to his niece. "You keep a still tongue in your head, if you can, and don't go chattering at the theatre. And don't let anything that was that young woman's pass out of your hands to any one--do you hear?"

"I hear. But, uncle, I don't, and I can't, believe that Milly's sweetheart had anything to do with killing her."

"No one asks you for what you believe. I've been asking you for what you know. And that's all I'm likely to ask you for. You mark what I say, and don't you give a scrap of her writing to any one. I'm off."

He was off, catching up the portraits from the table as he went.

As soon as her uncle had gone Miss Johnson turned to Mr. Haines.

"If you want to see those letters, you'll have to come now. I have to be at the theatre soon after eight."

The young girl and the old man went away together. Miss Johnson led the way through Coventry Street. Suddenly stopping, she caught Mr. Haines by the arm.

"Oh! There he is!"

"Who?"

"Milly's sweetheart."

"Where?"

Miss Johnson pointed to a tall man who was standing on the pavement talking to the driver of a hansom cab. Mr. Haines started. His companion felt that he was trembling. He spoke as if he were short of breath.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure--certain."

Mr. Haines went forward without a word. Miss Johnson stood still and watched, fearing she knew not what.

But she need have feared nothing, for nothing happened.

By the time that Mr. Haines had reached the cab the man in question had seated himself inside. Mr. Haines had a good look at him before the cab moved off.

"It's he! Her aristocrat! I knew that he smelt of blood first time I saw him, but if I'd known that the blood was hers----"

He raised his hands above his head, as if by way of a wind-up to his unfinished sentence.

The passers-by stared at the old man talking to himself and gesticulating on the pavement, wondering, perhaps, if he was drunk or if he was merely mad.