The Ashiel mystery

by Marion Bryce

So it was Higgs who opened the door and ushered out the last visitor, at the same time admitting the newcomer.

This proved to be a small, slight woman dressed in deepest black and wearing the long veil of a widow, who was standing with her back to the door, apparently watching the rapid descent of the lift which had brought her to the landing of No. 7.

She did not move when the door behind her opened, and Lord Ashiel, emerging from it in a hurry to catch the lift before it vanished, nearly knocked her down. She gave a startled gasp and stepped hastily to one side into the dark shadows of the passage as he, muttering an apology, darted forward to the iron gateway and applied his finger heavily to the electric bell-push. But the liftboy had caught sight of him with the tail of his eye, and was already reascending.

His anxiety allayed, Lord Ashiel turned again to express his regrets to the lady he had inadvertently collided with, but she had disappeared into the flat, of which Higgs was even then closing the door.

Ashiel stepped into the lift and sat down rather wearily on the leather-covered seat.

Although, to some extent, the relief of having unburdened his mind of secrets that had weighed upon it for so many years produced in him a certain lightness of heart to which he had long been a stranger, yet the very charm of the impression made upon him by Juliet Byrne, during his first meeting with her that morning, led him to suspect uneasily that his hopes of her proving to be his child were due rather to the pleasure it gave him to anticipate such a possibility than to any more logical reason.

He was so entirely engrossed in an honest endeavour to adjust correctly the balance of probabilities, as to remain unconscious that the lift had stopped at the ground floor, and it was not until the boy who was in charge had twice informed him of the fact, that he roused himself with an effort and left the building.

Still absorbed in his speculations and anxieties, he walked rapidly away, and, having narrowly escaped destruction beneath the wheels of more than one taxi, wandered down Northumberland Avenue on to the Embankment. He crossed to the farther side, turned mechanically to the right and walked obliviously on.

It was not until he came nearly to Westminster Bridge that he remembered the cipher that he had prepared for Gimblet, and that he had, after all, finally left without giving it to him. It was still in his pocket, and the discovery roused him from his abstraction.

He took a taxi and drove back to the flats. A motor which had been standing before the door when he had come out was still there when he returned; so that, thinking it probably belonged to the lady he had met on the landing, and guessing that if so the detective was still occupied with her, he did not ask to see him again, but handed the envelope over to Higgs when he opened the door, with strict injunctions to take it immediately to his master.