In another couple of minutes Louis was running upstairs. His wife
heard him, and shook in bed from excitement at the crisis which
approached. But she could never have divined the nature of the
phenomenon by which the unbridgable breach was about to be closed.
"Louise!"
"Yes," she whimpered. Then she ventured to spy at his face through
an interstice of the bedclothes, and saw thereon a most queer, white
expression.
"Some one's just brought this. Read it."
He gave her the note, and she deciphered it as well as she could--
DEAR Louis,--If you aren't gone to bed I want to see you
to-night about that missing money of aunt's. I've something I
must tell you and Rachel. I'm at the "Three Tuns."
JULIAN MALDON.
"But what does he mean?" demanded Rachel, roused from her heavy mood
of self-pity.
"I don't know."
"But what can he mean?" she insisted.
"Haven't a notion."
"But he must mean something!"
Louis asked--
"Well, what should _you_ say he means?"
"How very strange!" Rachel murmured, not attempting to answer the
question. "And the 'Three Tuns'! Why does he write from the 'Three
Tuns'? What's he doing at the 'Three Tuns'? Isn't it a very low
public-house? And everybody thought he was still in South Africa!.
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