"Well, to tell the truth, Marigold, neither can I," replied the young man. "Ever since that night at Hammersmith I've been trying in vain to solve the mystery."
"About the person concealed upstairs," remarked the blue-eyed girl reflectively. "Yes, it's most curious."
"It's more than curious," her companion declared. "Though I haven't mentioned it to you, I've watched the house for several nights, but I must admit that I've seen nothing at all suspicious."
"Oh! Then you've been on the watch!" she cried excitedly.
"Yes, on four occasions, and all to no purpose. Last Friday I waited from nine o'clock till one in the morning, and got wet through. He returned about ten, but did not come out again."
"He was upstairs with his secret friend, I suppose," said the girl.
"No doubt. Whoever may be confined there could not exist without seeing a human face and conversing with him, even for five minutes each day, or he would certainly go mad," said Gerald. "You remember I said that Italians, who have abolished capital punishment for murder, have substituted solitary confinement. It is far more terrible. They confine the assassin in a cell in silence, without sight of a human face. Their food is placed upon a turntable which revolves into the cell, so that the prisoner never sees a face. Such torture was invented long ago in the Bastille, and in every case it drives the guilty one raving mad within five years."
"I admit it is, but surely the punishment is far greater than that of hanging, or even the guillotine. Both are instantaneous, yet in Italy the criminal suffers all the tortures of Dante's Inferno--and deservedly so."
"I fancied a lot, but I saw really nothing to increase my suspicions. One thing we know--that he is concealing some person in that locked room. Now who can the person be?"
"It may be some relative who has done something very wrong and is afraid of the police," suggested the girl.
"Agreed. It may be. But we have discussed the matter so many times that I think we should not talk further--but act," he said. "We have proved beyond doubt that Bernard Boyne is a man of mystery. Your deaf aunt, a most worthy woman, acts as his housekeeper. Why does he retain her? Merely because she is stone-deaf. Why does he want a deaf woman to wait upon him? Because there are sometimes noises in the house which would arouse the curiosity of any who chanced to overhear them."