'Pooh, sir!'
'Pooh to you!' said Wilfred. 'And, if you want to know what I think, you poor fish, I believe your name is spelled with a capital F, like anybody else's.'
Stung to the quick, the baronet turned on his heel and left the room without another word.
Although he had given up his life to chemical research, Wilfred Mulliner was no mere dreamer. He could be the man of action when necessity demanded. Scarcely had his visitor left when he was on his way to the Senior Test-Tubes, the famous chemists' club in St James's. There, consulting Kelly's County Families, he learnt that Sir Jasper's address was ffinch Hall in Yorkshire. He had found out all he wanted to know. It was at ffinch Hall, he decided, that Angela must now be immured.
For that she was being immured somewhere he had no doubt. That letter, he was positive, has been written by her under stress of threats. The writing was Angela's, but he declined to believe that she was responsible for the phraseology and sentiment. He remembered reading a story where the heroine was forced into courses which she would not otherwise have contemplated by the fact that somebody was standing over her with a flask of vitriol. Possibly this was what that bounder of a baronet had done to Angela.
Considering this possibility, he did not blame her for what she had said about him, Wilfred, in the second paragraph of her note. Nor did he reproach her for signing herself 'Yrs truly, A. Purdue'. Naturally, when baronets are threatening to pour vitriol down her neck, a refined and sensitive young girl cannot pick her words. This sort of thing must of necessity interfere with the selection of the mot juste.
That afternoon, Wilfred was in a train on his way to Yorkshire. That evening, he was in the ffinch Arms in the village of which Sir Jasper was the squire. That night, he was in the gardens of ffinch Hall, prowling softly round the house, listening.
And presently, as he prowled, there came to his ears from an upper window a sound that made him stiffen like a statue and clench his hands till the knuckles stood out white under the strain.
It was the sound of a woman sobbing.