Who? Part 28

"Am I wrong?" exclaimed the Colonel, evidently at a loss to understand Cyril's perturbation. "Your wife is in town, isn't she, and ill?"

What should he answer? He dared not risk a denial.

"Who told you that she was ill?" he asked.

"It was in the morning papers. Didn't you see it?"

"In the papers!"

Cyril realised at once that he ought to have foreseen that this was bound to have occurred. Too many people knew the story for it not to have leaked out eventually.

"I have not had time to read them to-day," replied Cyril as soon as he was able to collect his wits a little. "What did they say?"

"Only that your wife had been prostrated by the shock of Wilmersley's murder, and had to be removed from the train to a nursing home."

"It's a bore that it got into the papers. My wife is only suffering from a slight indisposition and will be all right in a day or two," Cyril hastened to a.s.sure him.

"Glad to hear it. I must meet her. Where is she staying at present?"

"She--she is still at the nursing home--but she is leaving there to-morrow." Then fearing that more questions were impending, Cyril seized the Colonel's hand and shaking it vehemently exclaimed: "I must write some letters. So glad to have had this chat with you," and without giving the Colonel time to answer, he fled from the room.

Cyril looked at his watch. Ten minutes to three! Guy must have met with an accident. Suddenly an alarming possibility occurred to him,--what if the police had traced the jewels to Campbell? The bag, which had disappeared, must have been taken by them. Griggs, when he inquired so innocently about "Lady Wilmersley," had been fully cognisant of the girl's ident.i.ty. What was to be done now? He could not remain pa.s.sive and await developments. He must--was that--could that be Campbell sauntering so leisurely toward him? Indeed it was!

"What has happened?" asked Cyril in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, dragging his friend into a secluded corner. "Tell me at once."

"Nothing, my dear boy. I am afraid I kept you waiting longer than I intended to. I hope you have not been anxious?" Guy seemed, however, quite unconcerned.

"Anxious!" exclaimed Cyril indignantly. "Well, rather! How could you have kept me in such suspense? Why didn't you come to me at once on leaving Miss Prentice?"

"But I did. I have just left her."

"And she is really all right? The governess, Miss What's her name, is with her?"

"Certainly. But I didn't want to leave Mrs. Thompkins alone with a stranger in a strange place, so I stayed and lunched with them."

Cyril almost choked with rage. _He_ had had no lunch at all. He had been too upset to think of such a thing and all the time they--oh! It was too abominable! Campbell was a selfish little brute. He would never forgive him, thought Cyril, scowling down at the complacent offender. For he was complacent, that was the worst of it. From the top of his sleek, red head to the tips of his immaculate boots, he radiated a triumphant self-satisfaction. What was the matter with the man? wondered Cyril. He seemed indefinably changed. There was a jauntiness about him--a light in his eyes which Cyril did not remember to have noticed before. And what was the meaning of those two violets drooping so sentimentally in his b.u.t.tonhole? Cyril stared at the flowers as if hypnotised.

"So you liked Miss Prentice?" he managed to say, controlling himself with an effort.

"Rather! But I say, Cyril, it's all rot about her being that Prentice woman."

"Ah, you think so?"

"I don't think--I know. Why, she speaks French like a native."

"How did you find that out?" asked Cyril, forgetting his indignation in his surprise at this new development.

"We had a duffer of a waiter who understood very little English, so Mrs.

Thompkins spoke to him in French, and such French! It sounded like the real thing."

Cyril was dumfounded. How could a girl brought up in a small inland village, which she had left only six months before, have learnt French?

And then he remembered that the doctor had told him that she had retained a dim recollection of Paris. Why had the significance of that fact not struck him before?

"But if she is not Priscilla Prentice, who on earth can she be? She can't be Anita Wilmersley!" he exclaimed.

"Of course not. She--she--" Guy paused at a loss for a suggestion.

"And yet, if she is not the sempstress, she must be Anita!"

"Why?"

"Because of the jewels in her bag."

"I don't believe they are the Wilmersley jewels----"

"There is no doubt as to that. I have the list somewhere and you can easily verify it."

"Then the bag is not hers. It may have been left in the seat by some one else."

"She opened it in my presence."

"But you proved to me last night that she could not be Lady Wilmersley,"

insisted Guy.

"So I did. Anita has ma.s.ses of bright, yellow hair. This girl's hair is dark."

"Well, then----"

"There seems no possible explanation to the enigma," acknowledged Cyril.

"Perhaps she wore a wig."

"She did not. When she fainted I loosened her veil and a strand of her hair caught in my fingers. It was her own, I can swear to that."

"She may have dyed it."

"I never thought of that," exclaimed Cyril. "No, I don't think she could have had time to dye it. It takes hours, I believe. At nine, when she was last seen, she had made no attempt to alter her appearance. Now Wilmersley was----"

"Hold on," cried Guy. "You told me, did you not, that she had cut off her hair because it had turned white?"

"Yes," a.s.sented Cyril.

"Very well, then, that disposes of the possibility of its having been dyed."

"So it does. And yet, she carried the Wilmersley jewels, that is a fact we must not forget."

"Then she must be a hitherto unsuspected factor in the case."

"Possibly, and yet---"