Come in!"
The corporal stood, saluting, at the door.
"Mr. Matthews on the telephone, sir!"
Francis hurried away, leaving Desmond to his thoughts, which were
not of the most agreeable. Had he been wrong in thinking
Nur-el-Din a victim? Was he, after all, nothing but a credulous
fool who had been hoodwinked by a pretty woman's play-acting? And
had he sacrificed Barbara Mackwayte to his obstinacy and his
credulousness?
Francis burst suddenly into the room.
Des," he cried, "they've found Miss Mackwayte's hat on the floor
of the tap-room... it is stained with blood..."
Desmond felt himself growing pale:
"And the girl herself," he asked thickly, "what of her?"
Francis shook his head.
"Vanished," he replied gravely. "Vanished utterly.
Desmond," he added, "we must go over to the Dyke Inn at once!"
CHAPTER XXI. THE BLACK VELVET TOQUE
Across Morsted Fen the day was breaking red and sullen. The
brimming dykes, fringed with bare pollards, and the long sheets
of water spread out across the lush meadows, threw back the fiery
radiance of the sky from their gleaming surface. The, tall
poplars about the Dyke Inn stood out hard and clear in the ruddy
light; beyond them the fen, stretched away to the flaming horizon
gloomy and flat and desolate, with nothing higher than the
stunted pollards visible against the lurid background.
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