“Mr. Gildersleeve?” There was blank perplexity in her face.
“Then, you do not know him?”
“No, I do not remember ever having met a man of that name.”
Hammond was dumfounded. “Pardon me, then,” he offered. “I had thought you were a relative—or his secretary.”
“Was he one of the men you were talking to on the coach?”
“Yes. Mr. Gildersleeve, so the papers say, disappeared after leaving the train at Moose Horn Station that night.”
“Oh—I remember reading something about that in some of the papers brought over to the island. Was he the tall, stern-faced man who left his stateroom and got off at a little station shortly after you left him?”
“That was Mr. Gildersleeve.”
“I thought there was something mysterious about it all,” she said seriously. “I had been travelling with a friend, Mrs. Johnson, from Calgary. From Winnipeg east we were occupying a section in one of the other coaches, but I had gone back to the parlour car alone to read for awhile before I went to bed. Shortly afterwards, a dark, striking-looking woman came in and took a chair near me. We were alone at the time and I noticed she seemed to be keeping a keen watch on the stateroom of the man you say was Mr. Gildersleeve. First, there was a little grey-haired man went in.”
“That was Eulas Daly, an American consul,” explained Hammond.