ngements. Despatches were awaiting me from the head
porters of various stations--Victoria, Euston, Paddington, and so
on--but no Cunningham had as yet appeared.

I opened the message from Paddington last; the others had no news for
me, but it seemed that at Paddington a lady and gentleman, apparently
answering the description given, had taken tickets for Maidenhead. All
the blood in my body seemed to mount to my head. Unless there had been a
mistake in the identity, Wildred must have carried Karine off to the
House by the Lock!

It was horrible to me that she should be there. The thought of the
house, and what I believed had happened to Harvey Farnham under its
roof, was abhorrent. Why had he chosen to take his young bride, on the
day of their marriage, to that gloomy and accursed spot? A strange
thrill of apprehension, vague, yet none the less dreadful, shook my
nerves.

I consulted the latest A.B.C. time-table, which lay in the reading-room
of the hotel. In exactly an hour another train would leave Paddington
for Maidenhead and Marlow (the nearest stations to Purley Lock), and
after that there would not be another until ten o'clock.

I should not have much more than time to catch the former, if I intended
to go by it--and I _did_ intend to go. Exactly what I was to do,
how I was to get Karine away from her husband, I did not dare stop to
think, but somehow I would do it. So great was my dread of Wildred as a
criminal, and my respect for him as a schemer, that I even feared dimly
for Karine's safety with him. It was madness to entertain such a doubt,
I assured myself, for great heiress as she was, Karine was lovely enough
and sweet enough to inspire genuine love even in so cold-hearted a
villain as Wildred.

He might tire of her in the end, but for the present her life, at least,
would be safe with him. So I repeated mentally, over and over again; but
still I was pricked with a boding fear for more than her peace of mind.
Why had he taken her to that grim, hateful house by the river?

CHAPTER XXIX

At the House by the Lock

I would have wished to wait for Cunningham, both because I wanted him
with me, and because I was anxious to hear what he had done at Scotland
Yard. However, he did not come, so I wired him to the latter place, left
a short note for him also at the hotel, to be kept till called for, and
started off in a cab (when I dared delay no longer) at breakneck pace
for Paddington station.