Moya interrupted the superintendent sharply. An intuition, like a flash of light, had illumined her brain. "Where does that pipe run, Mr. Bleyer?"
"Don't know. Maps of the workings at the office would show."
"Will you please find out?"
"Glad to look it up for you, Miss Dwight. I'm a little curious myself."
"I mean now--at once."
He glanced at her in quick surprise. Was she asking him to leave the dinner table to do it? Lady Farquhar saw how colorless Moya was and came to the rescue.
"My dear, you are a little unstrung, aren't you?" she said gently. "I think we might find something more cheerful to talk about. We always have the weather."
Moya rose, trembling. "No. I know now who called for help. It was Jack Kilmeny."
Verinder was the first to break the strained silence. "But that's nonsense, you know."
"It's the truth. He was calling for help."
"Where from? What would he be doing down in a mine?"
"I don't know.... Yes, I do, too," Moya corrected herself, voice breaking under the stress of her emotion. "He has been put down there to die."
"To die." Joyce echoed the words in a frightened whisper.
Dobyans laughed. "This is absurd. Who under heaven would put him there?"
A second flash of light burned in upon the girl. "That man, Peale--and the other ruffian. They knew about the shipment just as you did. They waylaid him ... and buried him in some old mine." Moya faced them tensely, a slim wraith of a girl with dark eyes that blazed. She had forgotten all about conventions, all about what they would think of her. The one thing she saw was Jack Kilmeny in peril, calling for help.
But Lady Farquhar remembered what Moya did not. It was her duty to defend her charge against the errant impulses of the heart, to screen them from the callous eyes of an unsympathetic world.
"You jump to conclusions, my dear. Sit down and we'll talk it over."
"No. He called for help. I'm going to take it to him."
Again Verinder laughed unpleasantly. Moya did not at that moment know the man was in existence. One sure purpose flooded her whole being. She was going to save her lover.
India wavered. She, too, had lost color. "But--you're only guessing, dear."
"You'll find it's true. We must follow that pipe and rescue him. To-night."
"Didn't know you were subject to nerve attacks, Miss Dwight," derided Verinder uneasily.
Moya put her hands in front of her eyes as if to shut out the picture of what she saw. "He's been there for five days ... starving, maybe." She shuddered.