“Not that I know of. The inquest’s adjourned, and I’m off to-morrow. I’ll have to come back if necessary; but I hope it won’t be. Any message for Anne? I shall see her on Wednesday.”
“No, only what I’ve already written: that I hope her father’s better, and that she’d persuade him to come back with her. She was to have stayed with us all summer, as you know; and I’m not going to send her trunks on till she writes definitely that she can’t return. My private opinion of Mr. Pendennis is that he’s a cranky and exacting old pig! He resented Anne’s leaving him, and I surmise this illness of his is only a ruse to get her back again. Anne ought to be firmer with him!”
I laughed. Mary, as I knew, had always been “firm” with her “poppa,” in her girlish days; had, in fact, ruled him with a rod of iron—cased in velvet, indeed, but inflexible, nevertheless!
I started on my delayed journey next morning, and during the long day and night of travel my spirits were steadily on the up-grade.
Cassavetti, the murder, all the puzzling events of the last few days, receded to my mental horizon—vanished beyond it—as boat and train bore me swiftly onwards, away from England, towards Anne Pendennis.
Berlin at last. I drove from the Potsdam station to the nearest barber’s,—I needed a shave badly, though I had made myself otherwise fairly spick and span in the toilet car,—and thence to the hotel Anne had mentioned.
She would be expecting me, for I had despatched the promised wire when I started.
“Send my card up to Fraulein Pendennis at once,” I said to the waiter who came forward to receive me.
He looked at me—at the card—but did not take it.
“Fraulein Pendennis is not here,” he asserted. “Herr Pendennis has already departed, and the Fraulein has not been here at all!”