CHAPTER XXIX

"THERE IS ONE WAY"

"Have you done?"

Hazen was on his feet and, rigid still, but oscillating from side to
side, as though his strength did not suffice to hold him quite erect, was
surveying them with eyes sunk so deeply in his head that they looked like
dying sparks reanimated for an instant by some passing breath.

The half-fainting woman he addressed did not answer. She was looking up
at Ransom for the sympathy and pardon he was as yet too dazed to show.

Hazen made a move. It was that of physical suffering sternly endured.

"Let me speak," he urged. "I have a question to ask. I must ask it now.
Who was the woman who came up from New York with you? There were two of
you then."

Without turning her head Georgian replied:

"That was Bela, my maid; the same one who personated me on the afternoon
of my wedding."

"That accounts for the coarseness of her neck," Hazen explained with a
certain grim humor to the lawyer, who had given a slight start of
surprise or humiliation. Then quietly to Georgian:

"Was it she who threw the comb and dropped your bag where my man found
it?"

"I threw the comb; threw it from my window before I uttered that loud
shriek. It did not go very far; but I had to be satisfied with the fact
that it lay in the direction of the waterfall. But it was to Bela I
entrusted the flinging of the bag. I gave it to her when she left the
coach. I had explained to her long before just what a place she would
find herself in when she was set down at the foot of the lane; how she
was to make her way in the darkness till she came to where there were
no more trees, when she was to strike across to the stream, led by the
noise of the waterfall. I was very particular in my directions, because I
knew the danger she incurred of slipping into the chasm. It was her fear
of this and the more than ordinary darkness, I presume, which made her
throw the bag hap-hazard. I simply wanted it dropped on the bank above
the waterfall."

"I saw the girl," Mr. Harper broke in. "She wore a black skirt like the
one you now wear, a black blouse and a red-checked handkerchief knotted
about her throat. But the young woman who was seen leaving these parts
the next morning had on some kind of a red dress and wore a hat. Bela had
thrown away her hat; it was picked up where the coach stopped and
afterwards brought here."

"I know. My plans went deep; I foresaw the possibility of her being
recognized by her clot