“Near the Stock Exchange?”

It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped victim.  The man’s audacity!

“He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van knocked you over.  He said that he thought it was a Pickford’s van—­was it a Pickford’s van?”

“No, it was not a Pickford’s van.  Mabel, were you in Draper’s Buildings when you wrote that letter?”

“Wrote what letter?”

“Have you forgotten it already?  I do not believe that there is a word in it which will not be branded on my brain until I die.”

“Hereward!  What do you mean?”

“Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have forgotten it already?”

He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication.  She glanced at it, askance.  Then she took it with a little gasp.

“Hereward, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a chair.”  She took a chair.  “Whatever—­whatever’s this?” As she read the letter the varying expressions which passed across her face were, in themselves, a study in psychology.  “Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any conceivable circumstances, I could have written such a letter as this?”

“Mabel!”

She rose to her feet with emphasis.

“Hereward, don’t say that you thought this came from me!”

“Not from you?” He remembered Knowles’s diplomatic reception of the epistle on its first appearance.  “I suppose that you will say next that this is not a lock of your hair?”

“My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet?  This a lock of my hair!  Why, it’s not in the least bit like my hair!”

Which was certainly inaccurate.  As far as color was concerned it was an almost perfect match.  The duke turned to Mr. Dacre.

“Ivor, I’ve had to go through a good deal this afternoon.  If I have to go through much more, something will crack!” He touched his forehead.  “I think it’s my turn to take a chair.”  Not the one which the duchess had vacated, but one which faced it.  He stretched out his legs in front of him; he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets; he said, in a tone which was not gloomy but absolutely grewsome: 

“Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnaped?”

“Kidnaped?”

“The word I used was ‘kidnaped.’  But I will spell it if you like.  Or I will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning.”

The duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was awake or sleeping.  She turned to Ivor.

“Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward’s brain?”

The duke took the words out of his cousin’s mouth.

“On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind.  I don’t know if you are under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford’s van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run over by a Pickford’s van.  So far as I am concerned there has been no accident.  Dismiss that delusion from your mind.”