my confidence. Presently she produced the oilskin packet, and asked me if I
recognized it, watching me like a lynx all the time.
“I took it and turned it over in a puzzled sort of way. Then I shook my
head. I said that I felt I OUGHT to remember something about it, that it was
just as though it was all coming back, and then, before I could get hold of it,
it went again. Then she told me that I was her niece, and that I was to call her
‘Aunt Rita.’ I did obediently, and she told me not to worry–my memory would
soon come back.
“That was an awful night. I’d made my plan whilst I was waiting for her.
The papers were safe so far, but I couldn’t take the risk of leaving them there
any longer. They might throw that magazine away any minute. I lay awake waiting
until I judged it must be about two o’clock in the morning. Then I got up as
softly as I could, and felt in the dark along the left-hand wall. Very gently,
I unhooked one of the pictures from its nail–Marguerite with her casket of
jewels. I crept over to my coat and took out the magazine, and an odd envelope
or two that I had shoved in. Then I went to the washstand, and damped the brown
paper at the back of the picture all round. Presently I was able to pull it
away. I had already torn out the two stuck-together pages from the magazine,
and now I slipped them with their precious enclosure between the picture and its
brown paper backing. A little gum from the envelopes helped me to stick the
latter up again. No one would dream the picture had ever been tampered with. I
rehung it on the wall, put the magazine back in my coat pocket, and crept back
to bed. I was pleased with my hiding-place. They’d never think of pulling to
pieces one of their own pictures. I hoped that they’d come to the conclusion
that Danvers had been carrying a dummy all along, and that, in the end, they’d
let me go.
“As a matter of fact, I guess that’s what they did think at first, and, in
a way, it was dangerous for me. I learnt afterwards that they nearly did away
with me then and there–there was never much chance of their ‘letting me
go’–but the first man, who was the boss, preferred to keep me alive on the
chance of my having hidden them, and being able to tell where if I recovered my
memory. They watched me constantly for weeks. Sometimes they’d ask me questions
by the hour–I guess there was nothing they didn’t know about the third
degree!–but somehow I managed to hold my own. The strain of it was awful,
though . . .
“They took me back to Ireland, and over every step of the Journey again, in
case I’d hidden it somewhere en route. Mrs. Vandemeyer and another woman never
left me for a moment. They spoke of me as a young relative of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
whose mind was affected by the shock of the Lusitania. There was no one I could
appeal to for help without giving myself away to THEM, and if I risked it and
failed–and Mrs. Vandemeyer looked so rich, and so beautifully dressed, that I
felt convinced they’d take her word against mine, and think it was part of my
mental trouble to think myself ‘persecuted’–I felt that the horrors in store
for me would be too awful once they knew I’d been only shamming.”
Sir James nodded comprehendingly.
“Mrs. Vandemeyer was a woman of great personality. With that and her social
position she would have had little difficulty in imposing her point of view in
preference to yours. Your sensational accusations against her would not easily
have found credence.”
“That’s what I thought. It ended in my being sent to a sanatorium at
Bournemouth. I couldn’t make up my mind at first whether it was a sham affair
or genuine. A hospital nurse had charge of me. I was a special patient. She