MISSING!
A week later I was engaged one morning dictating letters to my typist
when Hensman rushed into my room, evidently in a state of great
agitation.
“Can I speak to you for a moment?” he asked. He was pale and agitated.
At a sign from me the girl left the room. “What’s wrong, old man?” I
said.
“Have you seen the paper this morning?” he asked.
“No, not yet. Why?”
“Then you haven’t seen this,” he said, handing me his copy of the
_Times_ which, as most solicitors do, he was in the habit of scanning
before he began his day’s work.
What I read staggered me. It was as follows:
MISSING LADY
“The police are actively in search of Mrs. Thelma Audley, aged
20, daughter of Mrs. Shaylor, widow of Lieutenant-Commander Cyril
Shaylor, R.N., who left her home at Bexhill-on-Sea on the morning of
the 18th inst. after the receipt of an urgent telegram calling her to
London.
“She did not show the message to anyone, but its receipt apparently
caused her great excitement, for she hurriedly packed a bag, telling
her mother that she would be staying at the Grosvenor Hotel at
Victoria and would return next day.
“Nothing has since been seen or heard of her. She did not arrive at
the hotel, and it is an open question whether she actually ever went
to London.
“Inquiries show that she did not travel by the train she intended.
But as there are two lines of railway from Bexhill to London the lady
may have taken the second route, by a train leaving half-an-hour
later, which brought a good many returning excursionists to London,
so that she may easily have passed unnoticed.
“One curious feature of the case is that Mrs. Audley, on receipt of
the telegram, apparently burned it by applying a match, as the tinder
was found in the fireplace of her bedroom. Another most curious
feature is that her mother Mrs. Shaylor received on the following day
a telegram handed in at Waterloo Station, with the words, ‘_Am all
right, do not worry. Back soon--Thelma._’
“Mrs. Audley and her mother are well-known in Bexhill, where they
have lived for two years. The young lady married early in the New
Year, but her husband being called abroad, she has remained at home
during the summer. Any information concerning the missing lady will
be gladly received by her mother, and can be given to any police
station. Her description which was circulated yesterday is as
follows:--”
Then followed a very minute description of Thelma, and of the clothes
she wore when she left Bexhill.
Thelma had disappeared! Did that mysterious message emanate from her
husband? Had she gone to join him in hiding?
Why had she been so careful to destroy that message which called her to
London? If it were from Stanley, as I felt certain it was, then what
more natural than that she would have told her mother and explained
that she was rejoining him?
She was elated at receipt of the message! Why?
“This is even more amazing than the past events,” I declared to Hensman
when, at last I found my tongue. “What do you think of it?”
“I don’t know what to think of it, old chap,” was my partner’s reply,
“except that it makes the whole affair more mysterious than ever. It is
quite clear she has disappeared of her own free will. Possibly she has
some motive, as her husband undoubtedly had, for effacing himself, and
I should think it quite possible she has gone to join him, wherever he
is.”
I put in a telephone call to Mrs. Shaylor at once. Her strained voice
clearly betrayed acute distress and anxiety. When I told her I had read
the account of Thelma’s disappearance, she said:
“Oh! Mr. Yelverton, I am so terribly distressed. What do you think of
it all? I suppose you know nothing of my girl’s whereabouts.”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said despairingly. “I wrote to her some days
ago, but had no reply.”
“Your letter is here. It came on the night she left. I recognized your
handwriting. I believe she is in London, and that she sent me that
reassuring telegram from Waterloo, but the police do not believe it.
They doubt that she ever went to London.”
“Who says so? The local police?”
“One of the two detectives who came down from London yesterday to see
me.”
“But that telegram which she burned,” I asked. “Who was the sender.
Have you any suspicion?”
“I feel quite certain that it was from Stanley.”
“Then if she is with her husband, why should we worry?” I asked.
“Because--well, because I have a strange intuition that there is
something seriously wrong. Why, I can’t tell--a mother’s intuition is
usually right, Mr. Yelverton.”
“Is that really all you know?” I asked eagerly. “Cannot I be of any
service in assisting to trace her?”
“Well, the police are evidently doing their best,” was her reply.
“There is one queer circumstance about the affair, namely that on the
day before she received the telegram, a stranger called to see her.
We had just had dinner when he was announced. He was a tall, thin,
fair-haired young man, and he asked to see Thelma. She saw him in the
morning-room, and she was alone with him for about ten minutes or
so. After he left she seemed to be wonderfully elated. She would tell
me nothing, only that some good news had been imparted to her by the
stranger. I asked her why she did not confide in me, but she replied
that it was her own affair, and that at the moment she was not allowed
to divulge it. Later on she would tell me all. Then next day she
received the telegram which she had apparently been expecting, and left.
“Oh! Mr. Yelverton! The mystery of it all is driving me to
distraction,” the poor lady went on. “If you can do anything to help me
I shall thank you forever.”
“Listen, Mrs. Shaylor,” I said over the wire. “Will you kindly repeat
the description of that stranger who called to see Thelma on the day
previous. It is important--very important!”
She gave a detailed description of the fair-haired young man and the
clothes he wore.
“Did she appear to know him?”
“Oh, yes! It was evident that they had met before,” came the voice
over the telephone. “He greeted her merrily, and asked to be allowed
to speak with her in private. Later, I heard Thelma’s voice raised in
exultant laughter.”
“Have you never seen the young man before?” I asked.
“Never. He was a total stranger to me. But Thelma knew him without a
doubt. If you can help me to re-discover her it is all I can ask of
you, Mr. Yelverton. You can imagine my distress. Why she does not let
me hear from her I cannot think.”
“Perhaps Stanley--who is evidently in hiding, forbids it,” I said in an
effort to relieve her anxiety, though the fact of her disappearance in
itself showed some sinister influence at work.
“Perhaps so, Mr. Yelverton. Yet if that is the case it is surely very
unfair to me!”
“Time’s up,” chipped in the voice of the operator at the exchange.
“Sorry! Time’s up!”
And the next instant we were cut off.
Hensman had been standing beside me as I had been speaking.
“Well, what shall you do now?” he asked. “You’ve apparently placed
yourself in a fine fix, Rex. First you narrowly lose your life, and now
the lady is missing. Is it yet another plot?”
“Undoubtedly,” I replied, reflectively. “I must have time to consider
what steps to take.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t mix myself up in the affair any further. Take
my advice, old man. You haven’t been the same for months. It has got on
your nerves,” he declared, as he filled his pipe.
“I know it has, my dear fellow, but when I decide to do a thing, I do
it. I mean to solve this enigma.”
“Well, you haven’t been very successful up to the present, have you?”
he remarked, a trifle sarcastically, I thought.
“No. But I will not give up,” I said firmly. “This second mystery of
Thelma’s disappearance makes me more than ever determined to continue
my search.”
“Then forgive me for saying so, Rex--it is perhaps unpardonable of me
to intrude in your private affairs--but I think you are acting very
foolishly. If the young lady has disappeared, then, no doubt, she has
done so with some distinct motive.”
“In that case she would have confided in her mother,” I argued.
“Over the telephone you spoke of some stranger who had visited her.”
“Yes. It is that fact which urges me on to prosecute my inquiries,” I
replied. “The young man evidently bore some message, but from whom?”
Hensman’s advice was, of course, sound enough, but he was not in love
as I was. He saw things through quite a different pair of spectacles.
An hour later I took a taxi to Castlenau to seek old Doctor Feng, my
object being to ascertain whether he had any knowledge of what had
occurred.
In answer to my ring the doctor’s housekeeper appeared. She was a
sour-faced old woman in a rather soiled apron, whom I had seen before.
“The doctor ’aint in, sir,” she replied, in true Cockney intonation. “I
don’t know where ’e is.”
“What time did he go out?” I asked.
“Oh! ’e went out on Tuesday morning, and ’e ’aint been back since. But
’e often goes away sudden like.”
“Does he?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah!” I laughed. “I see you don’t like him.” I hoped to get more out of
her.
“I do. The doctor’s real good sort, sir. ’E’s been awfully good to me
and my girl, Emily. I don’t know what we should ’ave done this winter
if we ’adn’t ’ad this place. ’E’s a bit lonely, is the doctor. But ’e’s
been a real good gentleman to me.”
“Do you happen to know a friend of his, a Mr. Harold Ruthen,” I asked
suddenly.
“Of course I know ’im, sir. ’E’s often ’ere. ’E’s brought a lady once
or twice--a pretty young married lady. I don’t know ’er surname, but
the doctor calls ’er Thelma.”
Thelma! I held my breath. In face of what I had learned this was
staggering.
“I know the lady,” I said, with an inward struggle to remain unexcited.
And I went on to describe her and her dress.
“That’s the lady, sir.”
“When was she last here?”
“Oh! Well, it was about three days ago, sir. She came with another
young gentleman whom I’d never seen before--she called ’im Stanley.”
Stanley! Could Stanley Audley have been there?
“Yes,” I said excitedly as I stood within the hall, “and what else? I
have reason in asking this. A great deal depends upon what you can tell
me.”
“I ’ope I’m not telling anything wrong, sir,” replied the woman. “Only
you’ve asked me, and I’ve told you the truth.”
“Thanks very much,” I replied. “This is all most interesting. Describe
what this friend of the young lady’s was like.”
She reflected a moment, and then, telling me that he wore a dark blue
suit and was a “thorough gentleman”--presumably because he had given
her a tip before his departure--she described a young man which was
most certainly the missing man, Stanley Audley.
I questioned her, and she became quite frank--after I had placed a
couple of half-crowns into her hand--concerning the visit of Thelma and
Stanley.
“They came ’ere early in the afternoon,” she said. “They’d a long talk
with the doctor--a very serious talk, for when I passed the door they
were only a talkin’ in whispers. I don’t like people what whisper,
sir. If they can’t talk out loud there is somethin’ wrong--that’s what
I always says.”
I agreed. Further, I gathered from her that the conference between
Thelma, Stanley and old Feng had been most confidential.
“The young man left ’arf an ’our before the young lady,” she told me.
“’E seemed very nervous, I thought. It was dark when ’e went, and as he
said good-bye to the doctor, I ’eard ’im say, ‘Remember, I’m dead--as
before!’ I wonder what ’e meant? I’ve been thinking over it lots of
times. But, of course, sir, wot I’ve told you is all secret. I ought
not to ’ave told you anything. I’ve got a good job, and I don’t want to
lose it, as things are ’ard in these days, I tell you straight. So you
won’t repeat to the doctor what we’ve been talkin’ about, will yer?”
“No!” I said. “Certainly not.”