Both witnesses having been dismissed, he turned again to Phil Abingdon, who had been sitting watching him with a pathetic light of hope in her eyes throughout his examination of the butler and Mrs. Howett.
"The next step is clear enough," he said, brightly. "I am off to South Lambeth Road. The woman Jones is the link we are looking for."
"But the link with what, Mr. Wessex?" asked Phil Abingdon. "What is it all about?—what does it all mean?"
"The link with Mr. Paul Harley," replied Wessex. He moved toward the door.
"But won't you tell me something more before you go?" said the girl, beseechingly. "I—I—feel responsible if anything has happened to Mr. Harley. Please be frank with me. Are you afraid he is—in danger?"
"Well, miss," replied the detective, haltingly, "he rang up his secretary, Mr. Innes, last night—we don't know where from—and admitted that he was in a rather tight corner. I don't believe for a moment that he is in actual danger, but he probably has—" again he hesitated—"good reasons of his own for remaining absent at present."
Phil Abingdon looked at him doubtingly. "I am almost afraid to ask you," she said in a low voice, "but—if you hear anything, will you ring me up?"
"I promise to do so."
Chartering a more promising-looking cab than that in which he had come, Detective Inspector Wessex proceeded to 236 South Lambeth Road. He had knocked several times before the door was opened by the woman to whom the girl Jones had called on the occasion of Harley's visit.
"I am a police officer," said the detective inspector, "and I have called to see a woman named Jones, formerly in the employ of Sir Charles Abingdon."
"Polly's gone," was the toneless reply.
"Gone? Gone where?"
"She went away last night to a job in the country."
"What time last night?"
"I can't remember the time. Just after a gentleman had called here to see her."
"Someone from the police?"
"I don't know. She seemed to be very frightened."
"Were you present when he interviewed her?"
"No."
"After he had gone, what did Polly do?"
"Sat and cried for about half an hour, then Sidney came for her."
"Sidney?"
"Her boy—the latest one."
"Describe Sidney."
"A dark fellow, foreign."
"French—German?"
"No. A sort of Indian, like."
"Indian?" snapped Wessex. "What do you mean by Indian?"
"Very dark," replied the woman without emotion, swinging a baby she held to and fro in a methodical way which the detective found highly irritating.
"You mean a native of India?"
"Yes, I should think so. I never noticed him much. Polly has so many."
"How long has she known this man?"
"Only a month or so, but she is crazy about him."
"And when he came last night she went away with him?"
"Yes. She was all ready to go before the other gentleman called. He must have told her something which made her think it was all off, and she was crazy with joy when Sidney turned up. She had all her things packed, and off she went."
Experience had taught Detective Inspector Wessex to recognize the truth when he met it, and he did not doubt the statement of the woman with the baby. "Can you give me any idea where this man Sidney came from?" he asked.
"I am afraid I can't," replied the listless voice. "He was in the service of some gentleman in the country; that's all I know about him."
"Did Polly leave no address to which letters were to be forwarded?"
"No; she said she would write."
"One other point," said Wessex, and he looked hard into the woman's face: "What do you know about Fire-Tongue?"
He was answered by a stare of blank stupidity.
"You heard me?"
"Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you are talking about."
Quick decisions are required from every member of the Criminal Investigation Department, and Detective Inspector Wessex came to one now.
"That will do for the present," he said, turned, and ran down the steps to the waiting cab.
Chapter 15 NAIDA
Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering glimpses of women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirted cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. The workaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of London had commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasure seekers, but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing his tightly-buttoned dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him, staring out of the window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at noon. Only one who knew him very well could have detected the fact that anxiety was written upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to be directed, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward, upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knocking at the door.
"In," said Nicol Brinn.
Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. "A lady to see you, sir."
Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamic force beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of his gaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, of tremendous enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature of stone again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled over in the club lands of the world.
"Name?"
"She gave none."
"English?"
"No, sir, a foreign lady."
"In."
Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinn did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London, Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. He raised his clenched hands. "Please God she has come," he whispered. "Dare I believe it? Dare I believe it?"
The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside, announced: "The lady to see you, sir."
He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the room. She wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up about her face. Three steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins withdrew and closed the door.
At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfigured features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and, raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry of greeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness of the East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes were glorious wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known a hundred ages. Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple, possessing the poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in the Orient.
"Naida!" breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. "Naida!"
His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his hands with a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.
Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him.
She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewels sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxury of the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinn seemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were on fire. Into the woman's face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.
"Oh, my big American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching him with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. "Do you still think I am beautiful?"