"No, sir."
Faunce took out the other four, and laid them on the table. The waiter's square forefinger alighted instantly on Colonel Rannock's photograph.
"That was the man, sir."
"Good! Now I want you to tell me anything you can remember about this gentleman and the lady who was with him. Take your time. I shall be here all the evening."
"There's not much to tell, sir, except the odd thing of his not coming back to the hotel. You see, sir, it's in this way. He and she comes in after eight o'clock. He gives me his bag, and tells me to order his room for him, and he orders dinner, anythink on the premises, as quick as possible, in a private room. I offers him the cartdurving, and he orders a bottle of Wachter, and they has their dinner cosy and quiet, all to theirselves. I can see as she is upset about something, and I gather that he's starting for New York next day, and that he's going to Klondyke. He sends me out of the room when the dishes are on the table, and I gather that they want to talk—but in taking in the tart—which they don't touch—and the cheese, I hear her persuade him to go for a turn by the water after dinner. He doesn't seem to want to go, but she presses it, saying as she has a splitting head, and thinks the night air will do her good. She looks pretty bad, as white as chalk, and her eyelids red with crying."
"Well, they went out together, I suppose?"
"Yes, they has their coffee and their liqueur—she has two goes—and then they go out. It must have been near eleven, for they sat a long time over their dinner, and the night was pitch dark. If they was strangers they might have walked into the water as easy as walk beside it; but whatever they did, that's the last we ever see of 'em, and my master was out of pocket for two dinners and a bottle of champagne; but there's the crocodile bag, and even if it's full of brickbats, it's worth three or four sovereigns to anybody as a bag; and if the gent don't turn up at the end of the year we shall put in an advertisement that, if not claimed, it will be sold to pay expenses."
"Did it never strike you that the gentleman might have met with foul play?"
"Well, no! There was her, you see. Two of 'em could hardly have got made away with and nobody hear of it. I expect he was running away with somebody else's wife, or some other rum start, and they went off to Jersey by the steamer that starts at midnight."
"And you've never given the matter a thought since that night, I suppose?"