“What’s up?” queried Betton, with a touch of impatience.
Vyse was attentively scanning the outspread letters.
“I don’t know: can’t make out.” His voice had a faint note of embarrassment. “Do you remember a note signed Hester Macklin that came three or four weeks ago? Married—misunderstood—Western army post—wanted to correspond?”
Betton seemed to grope among his memories; then he assented vaguely.
“A short note,” Vyse went on: “the whole story in half a page. The shortness struck me so much—and the directness—that I wrote her: wrote in my own name, I mean.”
“In your own name?” Betton stood amazed; then he broke into a groan.
“Good Lord, Vyse—you’re incorrigible!”
The secretary pulled his thin moustache with a nervous laugh. “If you mean I’m an ass, you’re right. Look here.” He held out an envelope stamped with the words: “Dead Letter Office.” “My effusion has come back to me marked ‘unknown.’ There’s no such person at the address she gave you.”
Betton seemed for an instant to share his secretary’s embarrassment; then he burst into an uproarious laugh.
“Hoax, was it? That’s rough on you, old fellow!”