“Mrs. Weathered isn’t here,” he told me, without ceremony, as soon as I asked to see her. “The funeral took place yesterday and the ladies have gone out of town.”
“Where have they gone?” I demanded in dismay.
The youth put on a stolid look.
“My instructions are to say that letters will be forwarded,” he answered, with a touch of sullenness.
And I could get no more out of him. To all appearances Sarah Neobard and her mother had fled.
As soon as I had got over my first surprise, I felt more relief than disappointment. Tarleton himself would now have to take the matter in hand, and I had more confidence in his power to deal with it than in my own. When we met again at lunch time I reported my failure to him, and he heard me with a tightening of the jaws that boded no good to the fugitives.
“Our friend Sarah has made a mistake,” he commented. “She ought to have known that she could not hide herself very long if the police really wanted her. I think we can trust Captain Charles to let us know where she is before many days have passed. I wonder what she told her mother to persuade her to run away like that.”
Again some thought seemed to strike him which he did not see fit to disclose to me. He shook his head doubtfully, and then sprang to his feet and hurried to the telephone.
When he came back it was to tell me that the police had been put on the trail of the two women. “I have told them nothing about the letters,” he added for my consolation. “We don’t want them to get on the files of Scotland Yard if we can help it. I have given them a hint that I have something up my sleeve.”
He poured himself out a glass of wine and sipped it with a relish.