A dark conspiracy seemed to
loom up in the background. "Has it ever occurred to you," I asked, at
last, in a very tentative tone, "that perhaps--I throw out the hint as
the merest suggestion--perhaps it may have been Sebastian who--"
He smiled this time till I thought his smile would swallow him.
"If Yorke-Bannerman had NOT been my client," he mused aloud, "I might
have been inclined to suspect rather that Sebastian aided him to avoid
justice by giving him something violent to take, if he wished
it: something which might accelerate the inevitable action of the
heart-disease from which he was suffering. Isn't THAT more likely?"
I saw there was nothing further to be got out of Mayfield. His opinion
was fixed; he was a placid ruminant. But he had given me already much
food for thought. I thanked him for his assistance, and returned on foot
to my rooms at the hospital.
I was now, however, in a somewhat different position for tracking Hilda
from that which I occupied before my interview with the famous counsel.
I felt certain by this time that Hilda Wade and Maisie Yorke-Bannerman
were one and the same person. To be sure, it gave me a twinge to think
that Hilda should be masquerading under an assumed name; but I waived
that question for the moment, and awaited her explanations.
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