.."
Desmond shook his head.
"She's not been here," he replied I'm quite positive about that!"
Francis sprang to his feet.
"Surely you must be mistaken," he said in tones of concern. "The
Chief sent her down yesterday afternoon on purpose to see you.
She reached Wentfield Station all right; because the porter told
Matthews that she asked him the way to the Mill House."
An ominous foreboding struck chill at Desmond's heart. He held
his throbbing head for an instant. Someone had mentioned Barbara
that night in the library but who was it? And what had he said?
Ah! of course, it was Strangwise. "So that's what she wanted with
Nur-el-Din!" he had said;
Desmond felt it all coming back to him now. Briefly he told
Francis of his absence from the Mill House in response to the
summons from Nur-el-Din, of his interview with the dancer and her
story of the Star of Poland, of his hurried return just in time
to meet Mortimer, and of Mortimer's enigmatical reference to the
dancer in the library that night.
Fancis looked graver and graver as the story proceeded. Desmond
noted it and reproached himself most bitterly with his initial
failure to inform the Chief of the visits of Nur-el-Din and
Mortimer to the Mill House. When he had finished speaking, he did
not look at Francis, but gazed mournfully out of the window into
the chilly drizzle of a sad winter's day.
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