THREE:CHAPTER VI. A VISITOR.Just for a moment Bruce almost lost his self-possession. The beauty with the fair hair was regarding him curiously. He felt half annoyed that he had been so near betraying himself. The medical man was uppermost now. Evidently the patient was in a state of almost collapse from alcoholic poisoning. As is usual in such instances, sleep had forsaken the wretched man, and he had had recourse to drugs. He had taken an overdose and medical aid had been summoned just in the nick of time.
THREE:"I fancy I can see a way out of the difficulty," he said. "I do not wish to pry into your affairs, but in a novelist's business one gets to know things. And I, too, am in a great quandary. Do you recollect the flower farm near Ajaccio?"
THREE:"Is this then the road to Vis?""You have given me some valuable clues," he said. "In the first place we now know the real name of the murdered man. Strange that it should be the same as the fascinating Countess! And stranger still that our brilliant adventuress did not call herself something else when she engineered herself into society. But probably that is part of the reckless audacity of her nature. It was very foolish, because it clogs up the brains of a man like myself who has knocked about artistic and theatrical London for so long. And I distinctly recollect a Lalage, a dancer, who made a hit at the halls some seven or eight years ago."
TWO:"That child's noise makes my head ache," she said.