“The date is right enough,” Jimmy Trevor replied. “You don’t come into a little wad of fifteen thousand pounds every day, and that date is in red letters in my almanac. But ask the lawyers—they’ll have it down—or try the Terminus Hotel. Our names will be in the register.”
“Well,” I returned, “you went to see Jimson’s Joy Ride, then to bed. Next morning—?”
“‘I’ve got to go to Jersey!’ Billy said to me, ‘to get married. The young lady is there, waiting for me—suppose you come with me and be best man.’ I had four weeks or so empty and plenty of money, so I said ‘Right ho!’ The lawyers had come down with some coin and didn’t want me for a bit until they’d straightened things some more. And then Billy got a telegram, ‘Lost my luggage; bring some clothes—Elsie.’ So off he went to a large shop and interviewed the manageress. ‘I want some clothes for a young lady,’ he said, ‘all sorts of clothes: nightdresses, stockings, whatever young ladies usually wear; plenty of them, and some frocks—and you see that young lady over there with the red hair?’ The manageress cast her optics round. ‘Yes, I see her,’ she said, ‘but you’d better not let her hear you describe her hair as red.’ Old Billy was a bit put out. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but she is about the build. What’ll fit her will fit the other.’ It was all easily arranged—anything is easy to arrange, you know, when you have the money to pay for it, and Billy seemed to have plenty. He came out of the shop carrying a brand new suit-case containing about eighty pounds’ worth of female garments. When he told me about it I said he was a silly Juggins; that what the telegram had meant was that he was to go to her flat and tell her maid to pack another box; which is what she told him when we got to Jersey. ‘We’ll do both,’ Billy said, and we went to the flat and got another lot of feminine mysteries. So we got to Jersey, and I saw him tied up and then went on to St. Malo. That’s how I never heard anything of Sir Philip Clevedon, and I bet Billy’s heard nothing, either.”
“And who is the—the girl?” Kitty demanded, quite naturally a little angry when she recollected the suspense and misery she had endured through her brother’s unexplained absence.
“She’s Elsie MacFarren,” Jimmy replied.
I knew her quite well. Miss Elsie MacFarren was a youthful American actress who had come across with a boisterous Yankee comedy, entitled Chick Tottle’s Turnout. The play itself had been a failure, but Elsie had been a success, and had remained here to earn one of the big salaries the British theatre-loving public willingly pays to those who take its fancy. She was not only pretty, but clever; and invitations to return to America—invitations heavily larded with dollars—were cabled to her at short intervals. But she stayed here proof against all temptations.
“And now,” I added briskly, “the next thing is to wire Sir William Clevedon to return immediately. He must come back. His presence here will dispel a lot of suspicion, and the story of his romance will counteract some ugly rumours. We will meet them in London.”
When I told Pepster the story I thought he would never stop laughing.
“This case,” he said, “is the absolute limit.”
“You’ll come with us to London?”