[CHAPTER X]
There was no news of the missing ladies in Grosvenor Street; but Gimblet interviewed all the servants and heard several facts, which gave him food for thought.
It was from Blake, the butler, that he received most information. It was Blake himself, looking heartily scared, with half his usual pompousness driven out of him by his anxiety, who opened the door to them and, on hearing from Sir Gregory who it was that accompanied him, begged Gimblet to allow him to speak to him for a few moments. They went into the morning-room, a cheerful white-walled apartment, gay with books and flowers, and Blake addressed himself to the detective.
“I’m very glad you’ve come, sir, I am indeed. Sir Gregory will have told you, sir, that Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner, who lives here with her, went out last night to the opera and have not returned. I have been very uneasy about them and at a loss to know what to do, sir, for Mrs. Vanderstein mightn’t like me to inform the police if so be that she’s gone away on purpose. But I never knew her to go away without informing me of the fact or without any luggage and leaving no address, though she does go off very sudden sometimes to spend a week or so in foreign parts, Dieppe being her favourite, I may say.”
“Indeed,” said Gimblet, “was Mrs. Vanderstein in the habit of going abroad at a moment’s notice?”
“She went very sudden, when the fancy took her, sir, but not so sudden as this. I’ve known her say at lunchtime to Miss Turner, ‘My dear, we will go to Boulogne by the 2.20 from Charing Cross,’ which, lunch being at one o’clock, didn’t leave much time for packing, sir.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” agreed Gimblet.