“I don’t know,” he answered. “I merely asked the question and your answer certainly seems sound. But now let us look about the coat.” He opened the wardrobe door. “Is the cloth coat she was wearing last night here?”
A glance showed Cheyne the brown cloth, fur-trimmed coat Joan had worn on the previous evening.
“And you will see further,” went on French when he had been satisfied on this point, “that there is no coat here of musquash fur. You say she had one?”
“Yes. I have seen her wearing it several times.”
“Then I think Mrs. Sproule saw her wearing it today. We may take it, I think, either that she returned here last night and changed her clothes, or else that someone brought in her coat and shoes, left them here and took out her others.”
“The latter, I should think,” Cheyne declared.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think she would come here of her own free will and leave again without sending me some message.”
French did not reply. He had rather taken the view that if the girl was the prisoner of the gang the garments would not have been changed, and the more he thought over it the more probable this seemed. Rather he was inclined to believe that she had reached her rooms after the episode at Earlswood, possibly even with the tracing; that she had been followed there and by some trick induced to leave again, when in all probability she had been kidnaped and the tracing recovered by the gang. But he felt there was no use in discussing this theory with Cheyne, whose anxiety as to the girl’s welfare had rendered his critical faculty almost useless. He turned back to the young man.
“I have no doubt that that shoe of Miss Merrill’s made the mark you saw,” he observed. “At the same time I want definite evidence. It won’t take very long to run out to Wembley and try. Let us go now, and that will finish us for tonight.”