Miss Daisy Hyslop received Francis that afternoon, in the sitting-room
of her little suite at the Milan. Her welcoming smile was plaintive and
a little subdued, her manner undeniably gracious. She was dressed in
black, a wonderful background for her really gorgeous hair, and her
deportment indicated a recent loss.
“How nice of you to come and see me,” she murmured, with a lingering
touch of the fingers. “Do take that easy-chair, please, and sit down and
talk to me. Your roses were beautiful, but whatever made you send them
to me?”
“Impulse,” he answered.
She laughed softly.
“Then please yield to such impulses as often as you feel them,” she
begged. “I adore flowers. Just now, too,” she added, with a little sigh,
“anything is welcome which helps to keep my mind off my own affairs.”
“It was very good of you to let me come,” he declared. “I can quite
understand that you don't feel like seeing many people just now.”
Francis' manner, although deferential and courteous, had nevertheless
some quality of aloofness in it to which she was unused and which she
was quick to recognise. The smile, faded from her face. She seemed
suddenly not quite so young.
“Haven't I seen you before somewhere quite lately?” she asked, a little
sharply.
“You saw me at Soto's, the night that Victor Bidlake was murdered,” he
reminded her. “I stood quite close to you both while you were waiting
for your taxi.”
The animation evoked by this call from a presumably new admirer,
suddenly left her. She became nervous and constrained. She glanced again
at his card.
“Don't tell me,” she begged, “that you have come to ask me any questions
about that night! I simply could not bear it. The police have been here
twice, and I had nothing to tell them, absolutely nothing.”
“Quite right,” he assented soothingly. “Police have such a clumsy way of
expecting valuable information for nothing. I'm always glad to hear of
their being disappointed.”
She studied her visitor for a moment carefully. Then she turned to the
table by her side, picked up a note and read it through.
“Lord Southover tells me here,” she said, “that you are just a pal of
his who wants to make my acquaintance. He doesn't say why.”
“Is that necessary?” Francis asked good-naturedly.
She moved in her chair a little nervously, crossing and uncrossing her
legs more than once. Her white silk stockings underneath her black
skirt were exceedingly effective, a fact of which she never lost
consciousness, although at that moment she was scarcely inspired to play
the coquette.
“I'd like to think it wasn't,” she admitted frankly.
“I've seen you repeatedly upon the stage,” he told her, “and, though
musical comedy is rather out of my line, I have always admired you
immensely.”
She studied him once more almost wistfully.
“You look very nice,” she acknowledged, “but you don't look at all the
kind of man who admires girls who do the sort of rubbish I do on the
stage.”
“What do I look like?” he asked, smiling.
“A man with a purpose,” she answered.
“I begin to think,” he ventured, “that we shall get on. You are really a
very astute young lady.”
“You are quite sure you're not one of these amateur detectives one reads
about?” she demanded.
“Certainly not,” he assured her. “I will confess that I am interested
in Victor Bidlake's death, and I should like to discover the truth about
it, but I have a reason for that which I may tell you some day. It has
nothing whatever to do with the young man himself. To the best of my
belief, I never saw or heard of him before in my life. My interest lies
with another person. You have lost a great friend, I know. If you felt
disposed to tell me the whole story, it might make such a difference.”
She sighed. Her confidence was returning--also her self-pity. The latter
at once betrayed itself.
“You see,” she confided, “Victor and I were engaged to be married, so
naturally I let him help me a little. I shan't be able to stay on here
now. They are bothering me about their bill already,” she added, with a
side-glance at an envelope which stood on a table by her side.
He drew a little nearer to her.
“Miss Hyslop--” he began.
“Daisy,” she interrupted.
“Miss Daisy Hyslop, then,” he continued, smiling, “I suggested just now
that I did not want to come and bother you for information without any
return. If I can be of any assistance to you in that matter,” he added,
glancing towards the envelope, “I shall be very pleased.”
She sighed gratefully.
“Just till Victor's people return to town,” she said. “I know that they
mean to do something for me.”
“How much?” he asked.
“Two hundred pounds would keep me going,” she told him.
He wrote out a cheque. Miss Hyslop drew a sigh of relief as she laid it
on one side with the envelope. Then she swung round in her chair to face
him where he sat at the writing-table.
“I am afraid you will think that what I have to tell is very
insignificant,” she confessed. “Victor was one of those boys who always
fancied themselves bored. He was bored with polo, bored with motoring,
bored with the country and bored with town. Then quite suddenly during
the last few weeks he seemed changed. All that he would tell me was
that he had found a new interest in life. I don't know what it was but
I don't think it was a nice one. He seemed to drop all his old friends,
too, and go about with a new set altogether--not a nice set at all. He
used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances
and places where he could take me. Once or twice he came here in the
afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he
could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair. He used to
mutter such horrible things that I had to wake him up.”
“Was he ever short of money?” Francis asked.
She shook her head.
“Not seriously,” she answered. “He was quite well-off, besides what his
people allowed him. I was going to have a wonderful settlement as soon
as our engagement was announced. However, to go on with what I was
telling you, the very night before--it happened--he came in to see me,
looking like nothing on earth. He cried like a baby, behaved like a
lunatic, and called himself all manner of names. He had had a great deal
too much to drink, and I gathered that he had seen something horrible.
It was then he asked me to dine with him the next night, and told me
that he was going to break altogether with his new friends. Something in
connection with them seemed to have given him a terrible fright.”
Francis nodded. He had the tact to abandon his curiosity at this precise
point.
“The old story,” he declared, “bad company and rotten habits. I suppose
some one got to know that the young man usually carried a great deal of
money about with him.”
“It was so foolish of him,” she assented eagerly: “I warned him about it
so often. The police won't listen to it but I am absolutely certain that
he was robbed. I noticed when he paid the bill that he had a great wad
of bank-notes which were never discovered afterwards.”
Francis rose to his feet.
“What are you doing to-night?” he enquired.
“Nothing,” she acknowledged eagerly.
“Then let's dine somewhere and see the show at the Frivolity,” he
suggested.
“You dear man!” she assented with enthusiasm. “The one thing I wanted to
do, and the one person I wanted to do it with.”