t length, and went on, waving the large pink cambric
handkerchief, now a damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it.

"She says--Lady Hannah says--that the eagerness and curiosity with which
the brute snapped up the hint she'd never meant to drop, warned her to
shunt him off on another line, and give no more information. They got on
money matters; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, my wife gave the
welsher a bit of her mind, and he showed his teeth in a way that meant
Murder. Just in time--before he could wring her neck round--and he'd
started in to do it, you understand--Brounckers came stormin' and bullyin'
in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and would be sent down to
Gueldersdorp.... They packed her back that very day.... And not a week
after, the pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the bogus
letter from Mrs. Casey."

Saxham had thought. He said now:

"This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy for Brounckers, was
disguised as the runner? Is that what has been proved? Did Lady Hannah see
the man and recognise him?"

Bingo leaned forward to answer.

"Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond Town. But the day the
_Siege Gazette_ came out, with a blithering paragraph in it that never
ought to have appeared, announcin'"--he coughed and crimsoned--"Lord
Beauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare;--my wife was rung up at the
Convalescent Hospital by a caller who wouldn't say where he telephoned
from. And the message that came through--couched in queer, ambiguous
language, and purportin' to come from an old friend--was a message for the
young lady who is now Mrs. Saxham!"

Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a word. The Major went
on:

"My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with Van Busch's. She
remembered the name given her as that of the owner of the farm at which
Mildare died, a place which by rights was in what's now the Orange River
Colony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain: 'Are you
So-and-So?' There was no answer to the question. But seven hours later the
Mother-Superior was shot; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way to
the Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran into one of
the Sisters in his hurry, and nearly knocked her down."

"That," said Saxham, "has always been regarded as a suspicious
circumstance. But the man was never subsequently traced."

"No! Because," said Bingo, "the runner from Dia