--Allow me to remind
you, sir, of the letter under your hand. You have not looked at it yet."
Noel Vanstone opened the letter. He started as his eye fell on the first
lines--hesitated--and then hurriedly read it through. The paper dropped
from his hand, and he sank back in his chair. Mrs. Lecount sprang to her
feet with the alacrity of a young woman and picked up the letter.
"What has happened, sir?" she asked. Her face altered as she put
the question, and her large black eyes hardened fiercely, in genuine
astonishment and alarm.
"Send for the police," exclaimed her master. "Lecount, I insist on being
protected. Send for the police!"
"May I read the letter, sir?"
He feebly waved his hand. Mrs. Lecount read the letter attentively, and
put it aside on the table, without a word, when she had done.
"Have you nothing to say to me?" asked Noel Vanstone, staring at his
housekeeper in blank dismay. "Lecount, I'm to be robbed! The scoundrel
who wrote that letter knows all about it, and won't tell me anything
unless I pay him. I'm to be robbed! Here's property on this table worth
thousands of pounds--property that can never be replaced--property that
all the crowned heads in Europe could not produce if they tried.
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