"No one you know," came in the small clear voice of the telephone. "One of those sort of people who writes letters to the papers above some such signature as 'Well-Wisher.'"
"If you don't give me your name," said Kate sharply, "I shall ring off."
"I don't think you will when I tell you I'm going to give you some news about your father."
"My father unfortunately is dead. You've got hold of the wrong Miss O'Neill."
The telephone laughed. "Not a bit of it, it's the lady who is known generally as Kate O'Neill I'm speaking with, but whose real name is Katherine Meredith."
Now Kate knew that Mrs. Craven was only "Aunt Jane" by courtesy and adoption, and had naturally wondered many times over who her real people might have been. She had always been a very practical young woman, and had not worried herself unduly over the matter; but still being human, she had her share of curiosity, and though the subject had always been strictly taboo at the house in Princes' Park, still that did not hinder her from discussing it with her own thoughts. And now, "Katherine Meredith!"
"I think you had better tell me who you are," she said to the telephone.
"I prefer anonymity. Do you know Day-Pearce?"
"No. Yes, perhaps I do, if you mean Sir Edward Day-Pearce, the West African man. I don't know him personally."
"All the better," rasped the telephone. "Anyway, he is lecturing to-night in a non-Conformist temple in Westbourne Grove—the Athenæum, they call it. Begins at eight. He's certain to say something about Meredith. I should try to go if I were you."