"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night, so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll stay here and talk to Miss Roden."
Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement, humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.
"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."
"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern authority.
There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie's thoughts had been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open; outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.
"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.
The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to boiling point in Sylvia's mind.
Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak, the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared in the doorway.
"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at his untimely return.
"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm afraid you and the--er--gentleman outside have had your journey in vain."
Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had undertaken to educate.
"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to move yet."
"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well--and away."
Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier losings.
"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he answered with a lift of the eyebrows.
"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my sister?"
"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."
"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.