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Updated: May 24, 2025
"I'm John Royce, his partner," and without answering the woman motioned us in. "Of course we must have a receipt for it," he added. "I have it ready here, and she need only attach her signature." "Miss Holladay is too ill to see you, sir," said the maid, with careful enunciation. "I will myself the paper take to her and get her signature." Mr. Royce hesitated a moment in perplexity.
"Or, better still, have a meal ready for you in half an hour? Rotin's is just around the corner." He would have refused, I think, had not the coroner interfered. "You'd better go, Mr. Royce," he said. "You're looking done up yourself. Perhaps you can persuade Miss Holladay to eat something. I'm sure she needs it."
Our first duty is to Miss Holladay; we must rescue her before he can warn his confederates to place her out of our reach." The unstudied way in which she said "our" filled me with an unreasoning happiness. "But why should they bother with a prisoner at all? They didn't shrink from striking down her father?"
Rogers had been carrying on the routine work of the business since his employer's death, and was supervising the settlement of accounts, and the thousand and one details which must be attended to before the business could be closed up. We found him in the private office, and stated our errand without delay. "Yes," he said, "Mr. Holladay kept in touch with the office, of course.
"A Frenchwoman, maybe, by the way she rolls her r's." I pricked up my ears. The same thought occurred at that instant to both Mr. Royce and myself. "Does she resemble Miss Holladay?" he asked quickly. "Miss Holladay? Oh, no, sir. She's much older her hair's quite gray."
"Yes, that's all," he agreed. "But suppose we can't do it, Lester?" "Can't do it?" I faltered. "Do you mean ?" "I mean that Miss Holladay positively refuses to say where she spent yesterday afternoon." "Does she understand the the necessity?" I asked. "I pointed it out to her as clearly as I could. I'm all at sea, Lester." Well, if even he were beginning to doubt, matters were indeed serious!
"By the younger one's resemblance to Miss Holladay," I answered, lying with a glibness which surprised myself. "The Jourdains maintained that a photograph of Miss Holladay was really one of their lodger." I heard him draw a deep breath, but he kept his face under admirable control. "Ah, yes," he said. "That was exceedingly clever. I should never have thought of that.
My packing was soon finished, and I sat down for a final smoke and review of the situation. There was one development of the day before which quite baffled me. I had proved that there were, indeed, two women, and I believed them to be mother and daughter, but I could not in the least understand why the younger one had so completely broken down after the departure of the elder with Miss Holladay.
The words brought me upright in my chair. Frances Holladay accused of well! no wonder our junior was upset! But Mr. Graham was reading through the article again more carefully, and while he nodded sympathetically to show that he fully assented to the other's words, a straight, deep line of perplexity, which I had come to recognize, formed between his eyebrows.
Before it had been only what you call blackmail a few thousands, perhaps a pension; now it was something more he was playing for a greater stake. I do not know all that he planned. He found Céleste suspected of having killed her father; he must get her released at any cost; so he wrote a note " "Yes," I cried. "Yes, of course; I see. Miss Holladay under arrest was beyond his reach."
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