Tanner asked several searching questions, and ended up completely satisfied that the man was telling the truth. There was no doubt whatever that Cosgrove’s story was true in this particular also.
There now remained to be checked only the matter of his visit to the Follies, and though Tanner was not certain of the necessity for this, his habit of thoroughness again asserted itself, and he drove to the theatre. There he learnt that there was no rehearsal that forenoon, and he went straight on to Chelsea. His ring at the actress’s flat was answered by a smartly dressed maid, to whom he handed his card, asking for an interview with her mistress.
The girl disappeared and in a few moments returned.
‘Miss Belcher will see you now, sir.’
He was ushered into a small drawing-room, charmingly furnished in pale blue, with white enamelled woodwork. The chairs were deep and luxurious though elegant, the walls panelled with silk and bearing a few good monochrome drawings, while on the dark polished floor were thick and, as the Inspector knew, costly rugs. But though everything in the room was dainty, its outstanding feature was its roses. Roses were everywhere, massed in great silver bowls and rare old cut-glass vases.
‘It’s a rose case,’ thought the Inspector whimsically, as he recalled that in two other sitting rooms he had had to visit—those of Miss Lois Drew and Cosgrove Ponson—he had found the same decoration, though in neither case with the same prodigal liberality as here.
He waited for over half an hour and then the door opened and Miss Belcher appeared.
Seeing her full face in the light from the window, he realised her beauty as he had not done in the restaurant. Though she was slightly—Tanner thought comfortable looking, though jealous people might have used the word stout—her features were so delicately moulded, her little, pouting mouth so daintily suggestive of dimples, her light blue eyes so large and appealing, her complexion so creamy, and above all and crowning all, her hair, so luxuriant and of so glorious a shade of red gold, that he began to understand the position she held in the popular favour. She was dressed in a garment which Tanner imagined was a négligé, a flowing robe of light-blue silk trimmed with the finest lace, beneath which peeped out the tiny toe of a gilt slipper.
Tanner bowed low.
‘I beg you to pardon this intrusion, madame,’ he said, ‘but my business is both serious and urgent.’