“Oh, it is a wonderful purpose that,” he cried.  “To see him hang—­hang by the neck.  Bah!  What concern of yours, Joan, is it, I wonder?”

“I am his daughter.”

“And I his son.  And, listen, my sister, here is news for you.  It was no living man at whose door his death lies, but at a woman’s.  A woman’s, I tell you.  You understand?  I swear it.”

She looked at him doubtfully.  Surely he was raving.

“A woman’s, David?”

“Ay, a woman’s.  And there are others too—­her victims.  Look at me.  I myself am one.  Her victim, body and soul corrupt.  If one could only reach her throat.”

Even Joan shuddered at the look which seemed to her devilish, Joan, whose nerves were of iron, and in whom herself the lust for vengeance was as the cry for blood.  Yet this was not possible.

“I think that you are raving,” she said.  “Did you not know that Douglas Guest disappeared that night, and was never more heard of—­ay, that there was money missing?”

“Douglas Guest took but his own,” he answered.  “It is the woman who is guilty.”

She was bewildered.

“Woman, David?  Why, there was none who would have harmed a hair of his head.”

Again he laughed, and again she turned pale with the horror of that unearthly merriment.

“You see but a little way, sister Joan,” he said, “and the vengeance you cry for is in other hands.  As for Douglas Guest, leave him alone.  He is as guiltless as you are.”

“You have told me so much,” she said firmly, “you must tell me more.  How comes it that you know these things?”

He shuddered.  His lips moved but she did not catch the sound of words.  He was apparently in a state of collapse.  She reached brandy from a cupboard and forced some between his teeth.

“Be strong, David,” she whispered, “and tell me of these things.”

He sat up, and with his incoherent words came the birth to her of a new and horrible suspicion.

“I had to have money,” he muttered.  “She drove me to it.  She turned me away.  I was in rags, an ill-looking object.  But I never meant that.  Douglas was before me, and he knows it.”

His head fell back, he was unconscious.  Joan rang the bell, and sent the maid for a doctor.  Yet when he recovered and learnt what she had done he refused flatly to see him.

“A doctor” he muttered, “would feel my forehead and ask me questions.  Their madhouses are full enough without me.  I’ve work to do yet.”

She spoke to him soothingly as to a child.

“David,” she said, “we have a little money—­not much, but such as it is you must share.  I cannot have you go about starved or in rags.”

He staggered up.

“I’m off.  Keep your money.  I’ve no use for it.”

She stood in front of the door, her jaws were set and there was a bright, hard light in her eyes.

“You’ll not go yet,” she said.  “You’ve a secret you’re keeping from me.  It’s my concern as well as yours.  We’ll talk of it together, David.”