'It is the fact
that she is not dead that makes me less unwilling to die, for a word
from her might send me to a death more shameful than the one you have so
kindly arranged for me.'
Hugo in that instant admired Ravengar, and he replied quite gently:
'You are mistaken. Where can you have got the idea that she is not dead?
She is dead. I myself--I myself screwed her up in her coffin.'
The words sounded horrible.
'Then you were in the plot!' Ravengar cried.
'What plot?'
'The plot to persuade me falsely that she is dead. Bah! I know more
than you think. I know, for example, that her body is not in the coffin
in Brompton Cemetery. And I am almost sure that I know where she is
hiding. I should have known beyond doubt before to-morrow morning.
However, what does it matter now?'
'Not in the coffin?' Hugo whispered, as if to himself. His whole frame
trembled, shook, and his heart, leaping, defied his intellect.
CHAPTER XVI
BURGLARS
When at eleven o'clock that same winter night Hugo stood hesitating,
with certain tools and a hooded electric lamp in his hand, on the
balcony in front of the drawing-room window of Francis Tudor's sealed
flat, he thought what a strange, illogical, and capricious thing is the
human heart.
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