"Did, the last I heard."
"Did he try to find out who the fellow was?"
"No, Lady Arbuckle wouldn't let him; it would have given the whole thing away. Besides, it was Arbuckle's statement about Eliza that made the stranger give the money; rather a delicate situation; looked as if he and his wife had put up a job."
"Poor devil!" muttered Mac. "Lied to his guest, insulted his wife, and robbed some poor woman of a charity that might have restored her to health, and all because of just the same kind of idiotic foolishness that is going on downstairs at Woods's this very minute. Damnable, the whole thing."
"I know of a case," said Lonnegan without noticing Mac's outburst, as he reached for his pipe which he had laid on the mantel, "in which not a mysterious couple but a mysterious woman figured, and I know the man who was mixed up in the affair. He's a civil engineer now and lives in London; got quite a position. When I first met him he was a draughtsman in one of the downtown offices—this was some fifteen years ago. He was a good-looking fellow then, about twenty-seven or eight, I should say, with a smooth-shaven face and features like a girl's, they were so regular; a handsome chap, really, if he was about up to your shoulders, Mac."
"What sort of a yarn is this, Lonny?" interrupted Boggs. "Got any point to it, or is it one of your long-winded things like the one you told us when you weren't murdered?"
"It's one that will make your hair stand on end," retorted the architect. "Wonder I never told you before!"
"Go on, Lonny," broke in Jack Stirling. "Dry up, Boggs. He was a good-looking chap, you said, Lonny, and about up to Mac's shoulders."
"Yes, and half the size of Boggs around his waist," continued Lonnegan, with a look at MacWhirter.
"The firm he was with sent him to Vienna with some plans and specifications of a big enterprise in which they were interested. He arrived in the evening, hungry, and late for dinner; left his trunk at the station, jumped into a fiacre and drove to a café on the Ring Strasse that he knew. After dining he made up his mind to go back to the station, pick up his baggage, and find rooms at the Metropole. When he entered the café and took a seat near the door a woman at the next table turned her head and fastened her eyes upon him in a way that attracted his attention. He saw that she was of rather distinguished presence, tall and well formed, broad shoulders—square for a woman—and with a strong nose and chin. She was dressed all in black, her veil almost hiding her face. Not a handsome woman and not young—certainly not under thirty.