'
Slivers mentally made a note of this, and determined to go there and
find out at what time Vandeloup had come home on the night in
question, for this suspicious old man had now got it into his head
that Vandeloup was in some way responsible for Villiers'
disappearance.
'Where did Villiers say he was going when he left you?' he asked.
'Straight home.'
'Humph! Well, he didn't go home at all.'
'Didn't he?' echoed Barty, in some astonishment. 'Then what's become
of him? Men don't disappear in this mysterious way without some
reason.'
'Ah, but there is a reason,' replied Slivers, bending across the
table and clawing at the papers thereon with the lean fingers of his
one hand.
'Why! what do you think is the reason?' faltered Barty, letting his
eye-glass drop out of his eye, and edging his chair further away
from this terrible old man.
'Murder!' hissed the other through his thin lips. 'He's been
murdered!'
'Lord!' ejaculated Barty, jumping up from his chair in alarm;
'you're going too far, old chap.'
'I'm going further,' retorted Slivers, rising from his chair and
stumping up and down the room; 'I'm going to find out who did it,
and then I'll grind her to powder; I'll twist her neck off, curse
her.'
'Is it a woman?' asked Barty, who now began to think of making a
retreat, for Slivers, with his one eye blazing, and his cork arm
swinging rapidly to and fro, was not a pleasant object to
contemplate.
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