“You must not take that view. I really wonder, Dyke, that you have not closed up your town house and gone off to Scotland for the fag-end of the shooting season. You won’t hunt, I know, but a quiet life on the moors would bring you right away from associations which must have bitter memories for you.”
“I would have done so, but I cannot tear myself away while there is the slightest chance of the mystery attending my wife’s fate being unravelled. I feel that I must remain here near you. You are the only man who can solve the riddle, if it ever be solved. By the way, what of Raleigh Mansions?”
The baronet obviously nerved himself to ask the question. The reason was patent. His wife’s inexplicable visit to that locality was in some way connected with her fate, and the common-sense view was that some intrigue lay hidden behind the impenetrable wall of ignorance that shrouded her final movements.
Bruce hesitated for a moment. Was there any need to bring Mrs. Hillmer’s name into the business? At any rate, he could fully answer Sir Charles without mentioning her at this juncture.
“The only person in Raleigh Mansions who interests me just now is one who, to use a convenient bull, is not there.”
“Yes?”
“This person occupies a flat in No. 12, his name is Sydney H. Corbett, and he left his residence for the Riviera two days after your wife was lost.”
“Now, who on earth can he be? I am as sure as a man may be of anything that no one of that name was in the remotest way connected with either my wife or myself for the last—let me see—six years, at any rate.”
“Possibly. But you cannot say that Lady Dyke may not have met him previously?”
The baronet winced at the allusion as though a whip had struck him. “For heaven’s sake, Claude,” he cried, “do not harbor suspicions against her. I cannot bear it. I tell you my whole soul revolts at the idea. I would rather be suspected of having killed her myself than listen to a word whispered against her good name.”