“Yes; she was brought in on Wednesday morning about 3 a.m. by a police constable who had been on night duty in Regent’s Park. He saw her knocked down by a man, and picked her up unconscious, and she has been so ever since. The man got away in the dark, and at the hospital no one recognised the young lady from the description given in the inquiries that were made, as the account of the clothes she wore was all wrong. But there have been a lot of photographs of her and Mrs. Vanderstein in the papers to-day and yesterday, and this morning one of the nurses who’d been studying her portrait recognised the original in spite of her wounds. The hospital authorities communicated with us, and I’m off to the hospital now. I thought perhaps you’d like to come.”
“I should, certainly,” said Gimblet, and they were soon on their way.
“I have only once seen Miss Turner, and that was only a passing glimpse,” Gimblet said as the taxi sped along. “Don’t you think it would be a good plan to take one of the Grosvenor Street servants with us to identify the young lady? It is possible that the nurse may be mistaken; people look so different in a horizontal position. And their saying that her clothes were wrongly described looks to me as if there were some error somewhere.”
“I think that’s a very good idea of yours,” agreed Jennins, and putting his head out of the window he told the driver to go to 90 Grosvenor Street.
They called for Amélie, Mrs. Vanderstein’s maid, who appeared after a few minutes, in high delight and excitement at the prospect of assisting the police. She looked rather reproachfully at Gimblet, as though she would have liked to point out to him that it was to be regretted that he had hitherto failed to appreciate how valuable her co-operation might be. “Ah, cette pauvre demoiselle,” she murmured as they got into the cab; and her manner indicated that she would have liked to add: “How different it would have been if you had consulted me earlier.”
At the hospital there was a little delay before they were led upstairs and handed over to the guidance of a pleasant-faced nurse who led them to a ward full of casualty cases, which had suffered various injuries at the hands of Fortune.
In one bed was a woman who had been knocked down by a van; in the next a child who had fallen into the kitchen fire; in the third a woman whose husband had kicked her to the very verge of the grave; the fourth held a girl with an arm crushed in the machinery of the factory she worked in—so the nurse informed the inspector.
She led the party through the ward, keeping up a running commentary as they advanced, till they reached the end bed of all, in which lay a young girl whose head was covered with bandages, and who lay quiet and still as if asleep.
“Here she is,” said their guide.
Gimblet looked at Amélie.