“Your father received the first threat three months before it was put into execution. It was two or three days afterwards that I secured a post as secretary to Harvey Froyant, for no other reason than that his estate adjoined yours. He was a friend of your father, and it gave me an opportunity of watching. I tried to get employment with your father. Perhaps you don’t know that,” she said quietly, “but I failed. Even more dreadful, I was in the wood when he was killed.” She squeezed his hand sympathetically. “I didn’t see who it was who fired the shot, but I flew forward to where your father was lying, only to discover that he was beyond help, and then, seeing you through the trees running across the meadows toward the wood, I thought I had better get away. The more so,” she added, “since I had a revolver in my hand at the time, for I had seen a man stalking in the wood and I had gone in to investigate. “With the death of your father there was no longer any need for me to remain in the service of Mr. Froyant. I wanted to get closer to the Crimson Circle, and I knew the best way to attract the attention of the man who controlled the gang was for me to embark on a criminal career. It was not providential that you were passing the pawnshop when I came out after pledging Mr. Froyant’s golden image. My father manœuvred that, and when he described me as a thief and an associate of crooks, it was to create an atmosphere, which would impress Derrick Yale, or Ferdinand Walter Lightman, to give him his real name. There was no danger of my being sent to prison. The magistrate treated me as a first offender, but my reputation was gone, and immediately after, as I expected, I received a summons to meet the head of the Crimson Circle. “I met him one night in Steyne Square. I think daddy was watching me all the time and shadowed me back to the house. He was never far away, were you, darling?” “Only at Barnet,” he shook his head. “I was scared there, mother.” “My first task as a member of the Crimson Circle was to go to Brabazon. You see, Yale’s method was to set one member to spy upon another. Mr. Brabazon puzzled me. I was never quite sure whether he was straight or crooked, and of course I had no idea at first that he was a member of the gang. I had to begin stealing again in order to sustain my character. It brought down on me a reprimand from my mysterious chief, but it served a useful purpose, for it brought me into contact with a gang of crooks and led unconsciously to my being present in Marisburg Place when Felix Marl also died. “Yale’s object in employing me was to divert suspicion from himself. Besides which, he had intended a very pretty ending to my youthful life. The night he killed Froyant I was ordered to be in the vicinity of the house with a similar knife and the fellow gauntlet to that which Yale used himself in his dreadful crime.” “But how did you escape from prison?” asked Jack. She looked at him with amusement in her eyes.