The Mysterious Three Part 6

"I tell you I don't know it," replied the female operator.

"Can't you find it out?"

"I'll try. Hold the line, please."

After a brief interval, the voice said--

"It may have been double-two two two Mayfair. Shall I ring them for you?"

"Please do."

I waited.

"You're through."

"h.e.l.lo, what is it?" a beery voice asked.

"I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?"

"Vera 'oo?"

"Thorold."

"Theobald? He's out."

"_Thorold_, Miss _Vera Thorold_," I shouted in despair.

"Oh, we ain't got no Veras here," the beery voice replied, and I could picture the speaker's leer. "This ain't a ladies' seminary; it's Poulsen's Brewery Company, Limited. You're on the wrong number. Ring off."

And again the instrument was silent.

Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her whereabouts.

Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in order to devise some means of discovering Vera's whereabouts and getting into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his best to help me, he could not trace the number.

I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her.

Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth--

"There's a lady here to see you--a Miss Thorold."

"Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here?" I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.

"About ten minutes. She's up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and she'd wait till you came back."

"Vera!" I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience.

At last. She was there--in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!

CHAPTER FIVE.

PUTS CERTAIN QUESTIONS.

Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort her.

Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Vera's whom I had met only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was introduced to her--she insisted upon never remembering me either by name or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction--taken an ineradicable dislike.

"Ah, Mr. Ashton, I'm so glad you've come," she said without rising. "I have called to talk to you about a great many things--I daresay you can guess what they are--about all this dreadful affair at Houghton."

Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the more coldly polite I invariably become. It was so on this occasion.

"I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold," I answered, after an instant's pause, "but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see anybody. The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon, and he warned me to go straight home, take off every st.i.tch of clothing I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected."

"Oh, indeed?" she said rather nervously. "And what has been the matter with your friend?"

It was the question I wanted.

"Didn't I tell you?" I said. "It was smallpox."

My ruse proved even more successful than I had antic.i.p.ated. Miss Thorold literally sprang to her feet, gathered up her satchel and umbrella, and with the hurried remark: "How perfectly monstrous--keep well away from me!" she edged her way round the wall to the door, and, calling to me from the little pa.s.sage: "I will ring you on the telephone," went out of the flat, slamming the door after her.

But where was Vera? How could I discover her? I was beside myself with anxiety.

The Houghton affair created more than a nine days' wonder. The people of Rutland desperately resent anything in the nature of a scandal which casts a disagreeable reflection upon their county. I remember how some years ago they talked for months about an unpleasant affair to do with hunting.

"Even if it were true," some of the people who knew it to be true said one to another, "it ought never to have been exposed in that way. Think of the discredit it brings upon our county, and what a handle the Radicals and the Socialists will be able to make of it, if ever it is discovered that it really did occur."

And so it came about that, when I was called back to Oakham two days later, to attend the double inquest, many of the people there, with whom I had been on quite friendly terms, looked at me more or less askance.

It is not well to make oneself notorious in a tiny county like Rutland, I quickly discovered, or even to become notorious through no fault of one's own.

Shall I ever forget how, at the inquest, questions put to me by all sorts of uneducated people upon whom the duty devolved of inquiring into the mysterious affair connected with Houghton Park?

I suppose it was because there was n.o.body else to question, that they cross-examined me so closely and so foolishly.

Their inquiries were endless. Had I known the Thorolds long? Could I name the date when I first became acquainted with them? Was it a fact that I rode Sir Charles' horses while I was a guest at Houghton? About how often did I ride them? And on how many days did I hunt during the fortnight I spent at Houghton?

All my replies were taken down in writing. Then came questions concerning my friendship with Miss Thorold, and these annoyed me considerably. Was the rumour that I was engaged to be married to her true? Was there any ground for the rumour? Was I at all attached to her? Was she attached to me? Had we ever corresponded by letter? Was it a fact that we called each other by our Christian names? Was it not true, that on one evening at least, we had smoked cigarettes together, alone in her boudoir?

It was. This admission seemed to gratify my cross-questioners considerably.

"And may I ask, Mr. Ashton," asked a legal gentleman with a most offensive manner, as he looked me up and down, "if this took place with Sir Charles' knowledge?"

"Oh, yes it did. With his full knowledge and consent!"

"Oh, really. And you will pardon my asking, was Lady Thorold also aware that you and her daughter sat alone together late at night, smoking cigarettes and addressing each other by your Christian names?"

Now I am fairly even-tempered, but this local solicitor's objectionable insinuations ended by stirring me up. This, very likely, was what he desired that they should do.

"My dear sir," I exclaimed, "will you tell me if these questions of yours have any bearing at all upon the matter you are inquiring into, and if your very offensive innuendoes are intended as veiled, or rather as unveiled, insults to Miss Thorold or to myself?"