She pointed.
“I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. But I knew there was something wrong with him. I asked him if he couldn’t take any interest in what I was doing for him. Even in the concert of chamber music I’d arranged for that night, where Julio’s Trio was to render selections from the modern masters. And he said—”
“Yes?” prompted Colonel March.
“He said ‘Damn and blast the modern masters.’ It was too utterly tiresome, when Julio is all the rage this season.”
“Indeed?”
“Then I caught him cutting out that advertisement from the paper. That wouldn’t have mattered, and I forgot all about it. But only a week ago I caught him cutting it out again, this time out of The Times. So,” explained Lady Patricia, “I decided to find out who this ‘William and Wilhelmina Wilson’ really were. I paid them a visit yesterday.”
Her eyes took on a shrewd, speculative look.
“Whoever they are,” she said thoughtfully, “they’ve got pots of money. I expected to find the office some dreadful little place: you know. But it wasn’t. My dear man, it’s in a big new block of offices opposite the Green Park. So business-like: that’s what I can’t understand. You go up in a lift, and there’s a big marble corridor and a ground-glass door with ‘William and Wilhelmina Wilson’ on it.”
Her expression was now one of active fury, which she tried to conceal. As though remembering to be maternal, she lifted the Pekingese, shook it in the air, and cooed to it with pouted lips. The dog sneezed the hair out of its eyes, and looked bored.
“I opened the door,” she said, “and there was a big waiting-room. Empty. Some rather good bronzes and etchings, too. I called out. I rapped on the table. But nobody answered. Just when I was wondering what to do, Flopit here... izzums, precious!... Flopit found another door, and began to bark.”
She drew a deep breath.
“I opened that door. It was a big office, like a secretary’s office. In the middle was a big flat-topped desk, with a swivel-chair behind it. In the chair sat Frankie, my Frankie. And on his lap, with her arms round his neck, sat a horrible red-haired hussy, about nineteen years old.”
This time it was a near thing.
Colonel March’s cough was so prolonged and strangled that a blind man would have noticed something wrong. Lady Patricia’s hard eye noted it, and hated it. But she had to speak now.
“Well, really! I mean to say! I hope I’m broad-minded, but—! My dear man, I was boiling; positively boiling. I didn’t say anything. I just picked up Flopit by his precious neck, and walked out, and slammed the door. I walked across the waiting-room, and out into the hall.
“But I didn’t go any farther. After all, I have Frankie’s good at heart. And Frankie is awfully rich, and it didn’t seem right that she should get his money, whereas I... I mean, when you’ve worked and slaved for a man, as I’ve worked and slaved for Frankie... well, it’s rather thick.
“I waited in front of the door. Finally, I decided to go back and have it out with them. Back I marched into the waiting-room; and there I met somebody I hadn’t seen before. A well-dressed elderly man. Rather distinguished-looking: bald except for white hair at the back of his head, curling down nearly to his collar.
“He said, ‘Yes, madam?’
“I said, ‘Who are you?’
“He said, ‘I am William Wilson. Have you an appointment?’
“I just froze him. I asked to see Mr. Hale. He had the nerve to raise his eyebrows and say that Frankie wasn’t there: that he had never heard of any Mr. Hale and didn’t know what I was talking about. I said I also supposed he didn’t know anything about a red-haired girl either? He looked surprised and said he imagined I must mean Miss Wilhelmina Wilson, his niece and secretary — think of it! — but he still knew of no Mr. Hale.
“Well, really, that was too much! I just walked past him and opened the door to the office where I’d seen Frankie before. Frankie wasn’t there; but the red-haired girl was. She was standing in front of another little door, which led to a kind of cloakroom, and looking disgustingly guilty. I simply pushed her out of the way, and looked in. But...”
Lady Patricia Mortlake gulped.
“Yes?” prompted Colonel March.
“Frankie wasn’t there,” she said.
“He wasn’t in the cloakroom?”
“He wasn’t anywhere,” returned the girl, lifting her shoulders. “There was only one other room, a big private office overlooking Piccadilly on the fourth floor. He wasn’t hiding anywhere, because I looked. And there’s no way out of any of the offices except through the door to the main corridor, where I’d been standing. Frankie wasn’t there. But his clothes were.”
“What?” demanded Colonel March.
“His clothes. The suit he’d been wearing: with his watch, and notecase, and papers, and key-ring, and the fountain-pen I gave him for his birthday. They were hanging up in a locker in the cloakroom. Clothes, but no Frankie. And he hasn’t been seen since. Now do you wonder why I’m here?”
Hitherto Colonel March had been listening with an indulgent air. Now his sandy eyebrows drew together.
“Let me understand this,” he said in a sharp and rather sinister voice. “You mean he literally disappeared?”
“Yes!”
“He couldn’t, for instance, have slipped out while you were examining the various offices?”
“Without his clothes?” asked Patricia unanswerably.
There was a silence.
“Frankie!” she almost wailed. “Of all people, Frankie! Of course I suppose he could have sneaked out. For that matter, he could have climbed out of a window and down the face of the building into Piccadilly. But in his underwear? Frankie?”
“Suppose he had another suit of clothes there?”
“Why?” asked Patricia, again unanswerably.
It is not often that Colonel March finds himself stumped, definitely left flat and up against it. This appeared to be one of the times.
“And what have you done since?”
“What could I do? He’s not at his flat here, or at his place in the country. Not one of his friends, including his private secretary, seems to know where he is. I even tackled that dreadful Labour man he seems to have been so thick with recently; and I thought for a second he was going to burst out laughing. But even he swore he didn’t know where Frankie was.”
“H’m,” said Colonel March.
“We can’t make this public, you see. That would be dreadful. And so you’re our last hope. Haven’t you got any theory?”
“Oh, theories!” said Colonel March, waving a big arm irritably. “I can think of half a dozen theories. But they don’t explain the main difficulty. Suppose any lurid theory you like. Suppose the mysterious William and Wilhelmina Wilson have murdered him and hidden his body. Suppose there is a sinister political conspiracy against him. Suppose Francis Hale has disguised himself and is masquerading as the distinguished-looking old gentleman with the white hair...”
Patricia sat up straight.
“A supposition,” said the colonel grimly, “about as likely as any idea that he went walking about the streets in his underwear. But I repeat: suppose anything you like! It still won’t explain what puzzles me most.”
“Which is?”
“The profession of William and Wilhelmina Wilson,” answered Colonel March. “Any ideas, Roberts?”