All three spoke quickly together in a foreign tongue. The man Roesch
then made a brief statement, which apparently held his two companions
for some moments speechless in alarm. Then again they all commenced
talking in low confidential tones in that strange language--Slav I
believe it was.
Whatever it might have been, and although I understood no word of it, it
brought back vividly to my memory the indelible recollection of the
night of the tragedy at The Boltons.
I listened attentively. Yes, there was no mistake--those tones were
familiar. That trio of voices were the same that with my sharpened ears
I had overheard conversing in the inner room immediately before the
commission of the crime.
I have said that my nerves were shattered. All the past was a torturing
memory to me, but the quintessence of that torture was my failure to
discover my love. I believed that she alone could supply the solution
of the enigma, and what truth there was in that suspicion you shall duly
see.
The three voices continued to speak in that foreign tongue for perhaps
half an hour, during which period I was unable to form any idea of the
trend of the new-comer's announcement.
Then I heard the visitors taking their leave, apparently with many of
those gesticulated reassurances of respect which mark the shallow
foreigner. I extinguished my light and opened my door cautiously. As
they passed on their way down the corridor I succeeded in obtaining a
very good view of the interesting pair. They were talking together, and
I distinguished the man who had first called upon Edna by his deep
voice. He was a short, thick-set, black-bearded man of forty,
well-dressed in black, with a heavy gold albert across his ample vest.
His companion, whose name was apparently Roesch, was considerably older,
about fifty-five or so, of spare build, erect, thin-faced, with long
grey whiskers descending from either cheek, and shaven chin. He wore a
frock-coat and silk hat, and was of a type altogether superior to his
companion.
The woman Grainger's coffee was brought to her as usual in the morning,
but about ten o'clock she rang again, and when the chambermaid
responded, said--
"Here are two letters. Post them for me in the box in the bureau, and
tell them to send my bill at once. I leave at ten forty-five."
"Yes'm." And the girl departed to post the letters.
To whom, I wondered, were those letters addressed? Within my mind I
strove to devise some plan whereby I could obtain a glance at the
addresses. The box, however, was only at the foot of the stairs,
therefore ere I could resolve upon any plan the girl had dropped them
into it, and I heard her linen flounces beating along the corridor
again. Those letters were in the post, and beyond my reach.
She had written those two missives during the night, and after the
departure of her visitors. They had, no doubt, some connexion with the
matter which the trio had so earnestly discussed in that tantalising
foreign tongue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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