"Of course I am," laughed Boyne. "But keep cool, Lionel, old chap, or you’ll have one of those nasty attacks of yours coming on again. Ta-ta! I’ll come back very soon," he said, and turning he left the room and descended the stairs. "Perhaps I’ll come back," he muttered to himself. "But I do not think so! The idiot has served me well, and I’ve got the tubes. That is all I want—at present!" And a moment later he was walking in the darkness through Harpur Street. *CHAPTER XXVI* *"GET RID OF THE GIRL!"* Ten days more had passed. Poor Mrs. Morrison had been buried at Brookwood, her sister and several relatives being among the mourners. Notice had been given through a solicitor to the insurance company of the assignment of the policy for ten thousand pounds to Mrs. Braybourne. The solicitor, a perfectly respectable man practising in the City, had received a call from Mrs. Braybourne of Pont Street, and she had handed him the policy and the assignment. Boyne had first made secret inquiries regarding the unsuspecting lawyer, and found him to be a man with a very high reputation in his profession. Hence the Red Widow and her two associates, having successfully defied the French ex-maid and her lover, were now awaiting payment by the insurance company. Boyne, on his part, had cleverly destroyed all traces of the secret of that upstairs room in which had lived for some time the half-demented, eccentric Lionel Gosden, who was so blindly obedient to every order of the criminal who held him in control. "There only remains that girl!" remarked Boyne as he sat with his wife one night. "Yes. The sooner she’s out of the way the better, my dear Bernie. She knows far too much." "I’ve got the remainder of the stuff from Lionel." "Then it will be quite easy. I needn’t tell you the way." Boyne smiled as he took another cigarette from his case. "Yes," he said. "And then I think that Ena and I will clear off abroad and leave you as the lone widow in whose favour dear Augusta insured her life." "True. We ought to part as soon as possible. What do they think of your absence from Hammersmith?" "Oh, they know my home is burned up, but I put in an appearance now and then and collect up a few premiums just to show myself." "I wonder what the girl told the police?" Lilla remarked thoughtfully. "Some story which they, no doubt, put down to be a cock-and-bull statement—about the locked room, most probably. She might have heard Lionel moving about, or coughing, before I got him away from there. If so the noise would naturally excite her suspicion." "What about the man Durrant?" "Oh, we needn’t trouble about him. It will be months before he can get back again, and when he does, he’ll find none of us here, the girl dead—of natural causes, of course—and the house being rebuilt. We have nothing to fear from him, providing we can get rid of the girl."