"Dr. Ellis!" said she, disposing herself in a graceful attitude in a basket-chair. "Do you wish to see me with a view to becoming a lodger?"
"No, madam. I have come to inquire for Miss Gordon."
Mrs. Amber raised her painted eye-brows--they were painted, although the obscurity of the room prevented that fact becoming too apparent. "You are a day after the fair, doctor," said Mrs. Amber, with an artificial laugh. "I regret to say that Miss Gordon has left us."
"Left this house?" said Ellis, astonished at this information.
"Three days ago she left us. Her sister came for her and took her away. I am very sorry Miss Gordon is gone; I always had, and always shall have, the highest opinion of Miss Gordon. Of course, she was not the kind of person with whom I have been accustomed to associate," added Mrs. Amber, arranging the bracelets on her lean wrists, "being only an attendant at a low music-hall. Still, she was thoroughly respectable, and a thorough lady, I will say that. You wonder, perhaps, Dr. Ellis, that I should have a lodger of that occupation. But I am liberal in my views I was on the boards myself many years ago. You must have heard of the beautiful Miss Tracey, who appeared in the burlesque of 'Cupid,' at the Piccadilly Theatre--I was Miss Tracey. I was Cupid, and I retired only when I married Mr. Amber. Ah!" sighed the ex-actress, "he is dead now, and I keep a boarding-house. Such is life!"
As soon as Ellis could cut short these biographical reminiscences he did so. "I am sure that Miss Gordon is all you say, madam," he observed politely. "But can you tell me where she now is?"
"No," replied Mrs. Amber, promptly, "I can not. Her sister came for her. She packed her box and they left the house. She gave no address to the driver of the cab. Mrs. Moxton simply told him to go to the Marble Arch. I was out at the time Mrs. Moxton arrived, and she went straight up to her sister's bedroom. I was glad that I returned before Miss Gordon went away."
"Why do you say that?" asked Ellis. "Did you not see her daily?"
Mrs. Amber glanced round apprehensively. "I wouldn't say it to everybody," said Mrs. Amber, giving a queer reason for her confidence, "but as you are a stranger it does not matter. Since that horrid murder of poor young Moxton, Miss Gordon has been very strange. She came back from seeing her sister on the night of the crime, and from that time until she left, remained shut up in her room."
"Shut up in her room?"