"Perhaps?" he sniffed dubiously. "But, depend upon it, the key to this problem lies in London. You haven"t yet told me who this Miss Wynd is."
"A lady who, her father being dead, went to live with Sir Henry Pierrepoint-Lane and his wife."
"Ach! then she has no home? I thought not."
"Why? What made you think that?"
"I fancied so," he said, continuing to puff at his great pipe. "I fancied, too, that she had a lover--a young lover--who is a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment."
"How did you know?"
"Merely from my own observations. It was all plain last night."
"How?"
But he grinned at me through his great ugly spectacles without replying.
I knew that he was a marvellously acute observer.
"And your opinion of her ladyship?" I inquired, much interested.
"She, like her charming cousin, is concealing the truth," he answered frankly. "Neither are to be trusted."
"Not Beryl--I mean Miss Wynd?"
"No; for she knows who her visitor was, and will not tell us."
Then he paused. In that moment I made a sudden resolve; I asked him whether he had read in the newspapers the account of the Whitton tragedy.
"I read every word of it," he responded--"a most interesting affair. I was not well at the time, otherwise I dare say I might have gone down there."
"Yes," I said, "from our point of view it is intensely interesting, the more so because of one fact, namely, that her ladyship was among the visitors when the Colonel was so mysteriously a.s.sa.s.sinated."
"At Whitton!" he exclaimed, bending forward. "Was she at Whitton?"
"Yes," I answered.
"And her cousin, Miss Wynd?"
"Of that I am not quite sure. All I know is that she was there on the afternoon previous to the tragedy. Sir Henry"s wife is Mrs Chetwode"s bosom friend."
The old fellow grunted, closed his eyes, and puffed contentedly at his pipe.
"In that case," he observed at last, "her ladyship may know something about that affair. Is that your suspicion?"
"Well, yes; to tell the truth, that is my opinion."
"And also mine," he exclaimed. "I am glad you have told me this, for it throws considerable light upon my discovery."
"Discovery?" I echoed. "What have you discovered?"
"The ident.i.ty of the woman in black who visited Miss Wynd last night."
"You"ve discovered her--already?" I cried. "Who was she?"
"A woman known as La Gioia," responded the queer old fellow, puffing a cloud of rank smoke from his heavy lips.
"La Gioia?" I gasped, open-mouthed and rigid. "La Gioia! And you have found her?"
"Yes; I have found her."
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
A COUNTER-PLOT.
"I have no knowledge yet of who the woman is," responded Hoefer, in answer to my question. "I only know that her name is La Gioia. But you are aware of her ident.i.ty, it seems."
"No; like yourself, I only know her name."
He glanced at me rather curiously through his big spectacles, and I knew that he doubted my words. I pressed him to explain by what means he had made the discovery, but his answers were ambiguous. In brief, he believed that I knew more than I really did, and therefore declined to tell me anything. He was extremely eccentric, this queer old dabbler in the occult, and I well knew that, having once adopted a plan in the pursuit of an inquiry, no power on earth would induce him to deviate from it.
Fully an hour I remained in that atmosphere full of poisonous fumes, watching a further but futile a.n.a.lysis that he made, and afterwards took my leave of him.
I went back to Bayswater, wrote a letter of resignation to the doctor who had employed me, and then went forth again upon my round of visits.
The practice was large and scattered, and several cases were critical ones, therefore it was not until nearly eight o"clock that I returned again, f.a.gged and hungry, only to find the waiting-room filled with club patients and others.
The irregularity of meals is one of the chief discomforts of a busy doctor"s life. I s.n.a.t.c.hed a few moments to swallow my soup, and then entered the surgery and sat there until past nine ere I could commence dinner.
Then, over my coffee and a pipe, I sat at ease, thinking over the many occurrences of the day. Truly it had been an eventful one--the turning-point of my life. I had telegraphed to my mother, telling her of my good fortune, and, in response, received her hearty congratulations. One of the chief gratifications which the thousand pounds had brought to me was the fact that, for a year or so, she would not feel the absolute pinch of poverty as she had done through so long past.
And I was invited to Atworth! I should there have an opportunity of being always at the side of the woman I loved so madly, and perhaps be enabled to penetrate the veil of mystery with which she was surrounded.
I was suspicious of the baronet"s wife--suspicious because she had made her first call upon me under such curious circ.u.mstances. How did she know me? and for what reason had she sought my acquaintance?
She had endeavoured to flirt with me. Faugh! Her beauty, her smartness, and her clever woman"s wiles might have turned the heads of the majority of men. But I loved Beryl, and she was mine--mine!
Reader, I have taken you entirely into my confidence, and I am laying bare to you my secret. Need I tell you how maddening the enigma had now become, how near I always seemed to some solution and yet how far off the truth? Place yourself in my position for a single moment--adoring the woman who, although she was actually my wife, was yet ignorant of the fact; and I dare not tell her the truth lest she might hold me in suspicion as one of those who had conspired against her. So far from the problem being, solved, each day rendered it more intricate and more inscrutable, until the continual weight upon my mind drove me to despair. Hence my anxiety for the days to pa.s.s in order that I might journey down to Atworth.
At last, on a close, overcast afternoon in the middle of September, when the hot sun seemed unable to penetrate the heavy veil of London smoke and the air was suffocating, I left Paddington, and, in due course, found myself upon the platform of the wayside station of Corsham, close to the entrance to the Box tunnel, where Sir Henry and his wife awaited me. The former was a tall, smart-looking, elderly man with grey hair and a well-trimmed grey beard, who, on our introduction, greeted me most cordially, expressing a hope that I should have "a good time" with them.
I liked him at once; his face was open and honest, and his hand-grip was sincere.
We mounted the smart dogcart, and, leaving my baggage to the servant, drove out into the high-road which ran over the hills, looming purple in the golden sunset haze, to Trowbridge. Five miles through that picturesque, romantic district--one of the fairest in England--skirting the Monk"s Park, crossing the old Roman Road between Bath and London, and having ascended the ridge of the steep known as Corsham Side, we descended again through the little old-fashioned village of Atworth by a road which brought us, at last, to the lodge of the Hall. Then, entering the drive, we drove up to the fine old Tudor mansion, low and comfortable looking, with its long _facade_ almost overgrown with ivy.
One of "the stately homes of England," it stood commanding a view of the whole range of the Wiltshire hills, the trees and park now bathed in the violets of the afterglow.
From the great hall the guests came forth to meet us in old English welcome, and, as I descended, Beryl herself, fresh in a pink cotton blouse and short cycling skirt, was the first to take my hand.
"At last, Doctor Colkirk!" she cried. "We"re all awfully delighted to see you."
Our eyes met, and I saw in hers a look of genuine welcome.