He begged Davidson's indulgence for the apparent discourtesy. The woman
of the house--meaning Mrs. Schomberg--would give him the facts, though
unable to explain them, of course.
"What was there to explain?" wondered Davidson dubiously.
"He took a fancy to that fiddle-playing girl, and--"
"And she to him, apparently," I suggested.
"Wonderfully quick work," reflected Davidson. "What do you think will
come of it?"
"Repentance, I should say. But how is it that Mrs. Schomberg has been
selected for a confidante?"
For indeed a waxwork figure would have seemed more useful than that
woman whom we all were accustomed to see sitting elevated above the two
billiard-tables--without expression, without movement, without voice,
without sight.
"Why, she helped the girl to bolt," said Davidson turning at me his
innocent eyes, rounded by the state of constant amazement in which
this affair had left him, like those shocks of terror or sorrow which
sometimes leave their victim afflicted by nervous trembling. It looked
as though he would never get over it.
"Mrs. Schomberg jerked Heyst's note, twisted like a pipe-light, into my
lap while I sat there unsuspecting," Davidson went on. "Directly I had
recovered my senses, I asked her what on earth she had to do with it
that Heyst should leave it with her. And then, behaving like a painted
image rather than a live woman, she whispered, just loud enough for me
to hear:
"I helped them.
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