*****
"A gilded amateur detective," Roger Odell once called me in a joke. But I knew he would listen to theories I'd formed concerning this mystery which, like an evil spirit, had haunted his sister since childhood. All night I spent in elaborating these theories and dove-tailing them together. The girl had had a fright in the theatre. I had seen a man with strange eyes and a scar, looking at her; and through certain happenings at my hotel, I believed that a link between him and Maida's "Head Sister" might be found. That, of course, would free the girl from the promise she thought sacred.
By eight-thirty in the morning I was in touch with Pemberton's Private Detective Agency, and I had just been assured that a good man, Paul Teano, would be with me in ten minutes, when my telephone bell rang shrilly. It was the voice of Grace Odell which answered my "Hello!"
"Oh, Lord John," she called distressfully, "isn't it dreadful? Maida's going back to the Sisterhood House! The Head Sister has written her a letter. Maida's answering it. She doesn't blame the woman for anything. She thinks she herself was a coward to take fright at a bad dream. Do come and argue with her. The child wants to start this morning. That woman seems to have her hypnotised."
My answer goes without saying. I determined to put off the detective, but he arrived as I finished talking to Grace, and as his looks appealed to me I spared him a quarter of an hour. His eyes were as Italian as his name—with the shadow of tragedy in them. "Temperamental looking fellow," I said to myself.
My business with Teano had nothing to do directly with Maida. What I had to tell him was the invasion of my rooms two nights before, but out it came that I had been helping a woman, and that success in this case might mean her safety.
"I, too, work for a woman, my lord," the detective said. Though he had spent years in America, I noticed how little slang of the country he'd chosen to pick up. He spoke, perhaps in the wish to impress me, with singular correctness. "Now you have told me this, I shall be the more anxious to serve you. I turned detective to find her. I've been five years trying. But every morning I think, 'Perhaps it will be to-day.'"
There was no time then to draw him out as he would have liked to be drawn out. I showed him what there was to work upon, in my rooms as well as the two others, and then dashed off to Maida.
As my car stopped in front of Roger Odell's home, out of the house bounced a small boy—a very small boy indeed, with the eyes of an imp, and the clothes of a Sunday-school scholar. He looked at me as he flashed past, and it was as if he said, "So it's you, is it?"
I had never seen the boy before, but I thought of the collapsible box; and leaving a flabbergasted footman at the door, my crutch and I went after the small legs that twinkled around the corner. The elf was too quick, however. By the time I had got where he ought to have been, he had made himself invisible. Whether a taxi had swallowed him, or a door had opened to receive him, it was useless to wonder. All I could do was to question the footman. The child had brought a letter to Miss Odell, and had taken one away. "Meanwhile," the servant added, seeing my interest, "he has entertained below stairs, making faces and turning handsprings. Quite a acrobat, your lordship," remarked the man, who hailed from my country; "and that sharp, though dumb as a fish! We gave 'im cake and jam, but money seemed to please 'im most, an' his pockets was full of it already. 'E's got enough to go on a most glorious bust, beggin' your lordship's pardon."