Miss Violet Mordaunt traveled to London this morning by the nine-eleven train. This is right.
Friend.
There was no name; but the post-office said the information came from Rigsworth, and the post-office indulges in cold official accuracy. Somehow, this word from a friend did strike him as friendly. It made him read again, and ponder weightily, the longer statement signed “Violet.”
He could not tell, oh, sympathetic little sister of the Rigsworth postmistress, that you wheedled the grocer’s assistant into writing that most important telegram. It was a piece of utmost daring on the part of a village maid, and perhaps it might be twisted into an infringement of the “Official Secrets Act,” or some such terrifying ordinance; but your tender little heart had gone out to the young man who got “no answer” from the lady of the manor, and you knew quite well that Violet had never sent him to Pangley to hunt for a missing baby.
Anyhow, David was glowering at both flimsy slips of paper, when a letter reached him. It was marked “Express Delivery,” and had been handed in at Euston Station soon after twelve o’clock.
This time there could be no doubt whatever that Violet was the writer. Here was the identical handwriting of the first genuine note he had received from her. And there was Violet herself in the phrasing of it, though she was brief and reserved. She wrote:
Dear David—I am in London for the purpose of making certain inquiries. I must not see you if I can help it. I must be quite, quite alone and unaided. Please pardon my seeming want of confidence. In this matter I am trusting to God’s help and my own endeavors. But I want you to oblige me by being away from your flat to-night between midnight and two A.M. That is all. Perhaps I may be able to explain everything later.
Your sincere well-wisher,
Violet Mordaunt.
Then David ran like a beagle to Euston Station; but Violet had been gone from there nearly an hour, because he found on inquiry that the nine-eleven train from Rigsworth had arrived at noon. Yet he could not be content unless he careered about London looking for her, first at Porchester Gardens, then at Dibbin’s office, at which he arrived exactly five minutes before she did, and he must have driven along Piccadilly while she was turning the corner from Regent’s. London is the biggest bundle of hay when you want to find anybody.
Amidst the maelstrom of his doubts and fears one fact stood out so clearly that he could not fail to recognize it. Not Violet alone, but some other hidden personality, most earnestly desired his absence from the flat that night. In a word, Van Hupfeldt, who knew of the photograph and the letter being hidden there, had the strongest possible reason for seeking an opportunity to make an absolutely unhindered search of every remaining nook and crevice. But how was Violet’s anxiety on this head to be explained? Was she, too, wishful to carry out a scrutiny of pictures, cupboards, and ornaments on her own account?