"My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you."
I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather distant bow. She was severely dressed in black; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing.
Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth seemed too much in evidence. Her face was not exactly ugly, but she was by no means good-looking.
"I have to apologise," I said, rising and bowing. "I understand that Mrs Anson has let her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter."
She regarded me with some suspicion, I thought.
"If you are a friend of Mrs Anson"s, would it not be better if you wrote to her and addressed the letter here? Her letters are always forwarded," she answered.
She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person.
"Well, to tell the truth," I said, "I have reasons for not writing."
"Then I must regret, sir, that I am unable to furnish you with her address," she responded, somewhat stiffly.
"I have been absent from London for six years," I exclaimed. "It is because of that long absence that I prefer not to write."
"I fear that I cannot a.s.sist you," she replied briefly.
There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not seem a person amenable to argument.
"But it is regarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to see Mrs Anson," I said.
"I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs Anson,"
she replied. "I merely rent this house from her, and, in justice to her, it is not likely that I give the address to every chance caller."
"I am no chance caller," I responded. "During her residence here six years ago I was a welcome guest at her table."
"Six years ago is a long time. You may, for aught I know, not be so welcome now."
Did she, I wondered, speak the truth?
"You certainly speak very plainly, madam," I answered, rising stiffly.
"If I have put you to any inconvenience I regret it. I can, no doubt, obtain from some other person the information I require."
"Most probably you can, sir," she answered, in a manner quite unruffled.
"I tell you that if you write I shall at once forward your letter to her. More than that I cannot do."
"I presume you are acquainted with Miss Mabel Anson?" I inquired.
She smiled with some sarcasm.
"The Anson family do not concern me in the least, sir," she replied, also rising as sign that my unfruitful interview was at an end. Mention of Mabel seemed to have irritated her, and although I plied her with further questions, she would tell me absolutely nothing.
When I bowed and took my leave I fear that I did not show her very much politeness.
In my eagerness for information, her hesitation to give me Mrs Anson"s address never struck me as perfectly natural. She, of course, did not know me, and her offer to forward a letter was all that she could do in such circ.u.mstances. Yet at the time I did not view it in that light, but regarded the tenant of that house of mystery as an ill-mannered and extremely disagreeable person.
In despair I returned to St James"s Street and entered my club, the Devonshire. Several men whom I did not know greeted me warmly in the smoking-room, and, from their manner, I saw that in my lost years I had evidently not abandoned that inst.i.tution. They chatted to me about politics and stocks, two subjects upon which I was perfectly ignorant, and I was compelled to exercise considerable tact and ingenuity in order to avoid betraying the astounding blank in my mind.
After a restless hour I drove back westward and called at old Channing"s in Cornwall Gardens in an endeavour to learn Mabel"s address. The colonel was out, but I saw Mrs Channing, and she could, alas! tell me nothing beyond the fact that Mrs Anson and her daughter had been abroad for three years past--where, she knew not. They had drifted apart, she said, and never now exchanged letters.
"Is Mabel married?" I inquired as carelessly as I could, although in breathless eagerness.
"I really don"t know," she responded. "I have heard some talk of the likelihood of her marrying, but whether she has done so I am unaware."
"And the man whom rumour designated as her husband? Who was he?" I inquired quickly.
"A young n.o.bleman, I believe."
"You don"t know his name?"
"No. It was mentioned at the time, but it has slipped my memory. One takes no particular notice of teacup gossip."
"Well, Mrs Channing," I said confidently, "I am extremely desirous of discovering the whereabouts of Mabel Anson. I want to see her upon a rather curious matter which closely concerns herself. Can you tell me of any one who is intimate with them?"
"Unfortunately, I know of no one," she answered. "The truth is, that they left London quite suddenly; and, indeed, it was a matter for surprise that they neither paid farewell visits nor told any of their friends where they were going."
"Curious," I remarked--"very curious!"
Then there was, I reflected, apparently some reason for the present tenant at The Boltons refusing the address.
"Yes," Mrs Channing went on, "it was all very mysterious. n.o.body knows the real truth why they went abroad so suddenly and secretly. It was between three and four years ago now, and nothing, to my knowledge, has since been heard of them."
"Very mysterious," I responded. "It would seem almost as though they had some reason for concealing their whereabouts."
"That"s just what lots of people have said. You may depend upon it that there is something very mysterious in it all. We were such very close friends for years, and it is certainly strange that Mrs Anson has never confided in me the secret of her whereabouts."
I remembered the old colonel"s strange warning on that evening long ago, when I had first met Mabel at his table. What, I wondered, could he know of them to their detriment?
I remained for a quarter of an hour longer. The colonel"s wife was full of the latest t.i.ttle-tattle, as the wife of an _ex-attache_ always is.
It is part of the diplomatic training to be always well-informed in the sayings and doings of our neighbours; and as I allowed her to gossip on she revealed to me many things of which I was in ignorance. Nellie, her daughter, had, it appeared, married the son of a Newcastle shipowner a couple of years before, and now lived near Berwick-on-Tweed.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I asked whether she knew Miss Wells or the man Hickman, who had been my fellow-guests on that night when I had dined at The Boltons.
"I knew a Miss Wells--a very p.r.o.nounced old maid, who was a friend of hers," answered Mrs Channing. "But she caught influenza about a year ago, and died of it. She lived in Edith Villas, Kensington."
"And Hickman, a fair man, of middle age, with a very ugly face?"
She reflected.
"I have no recollection of ever having met him, or of hearing of him,"
she answered. "Was he an intimate friend?"
"I believe so," I said. Then, finding that she could explain nothing more, I took my leave.
Next day and the next I wandered about London aimlessly and without hope. Mabel and her mother had, for some unaccountable reason, gone abroad and carefully concealed their whereabouts. Had this fact any connexion with the mysterious tragedy that had been enacted at The Boltons? That one thought was ever uppermost in my mind.