“Mr. Varney’s information is legally worthless unless he can produce the witnesses and unless they can identify a photograph or otherwise prove that the man whom they saw was actually Mr. Purcell. You must ask Mr. Varney about it. However, at the moment you are more concerned to find out what has become of your husband. I suppose I may ask a few necessary questions?”
“Oh, certainly,” she replied. “Pray don’t have any scruples of delicacy. Ask anything you want to know.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Purcell,” said Thorndyke; “and to begin with the inevitable question: Do you know of, or suspect, any kind of entanglement with any woman?”
The direct, straightforward question came rather as a relief to Margaret, and she answered without embarrassment: “Naturally, I suspect, because I can think of no other reason for his leaving me in this way. But to be honest, I have never had the slightest grounds of complaint in regard to his behaviour with other women. He married me because he fell in love with me, and he has never seemed to change. Whatever he has been to other people, to me he has always appeared, in his rough, taciturn way, as devoted as his nature allowed him to be. This affair is an utter surprise to me.”
Thorndyke made no comment on this, but following the hint that Margaret had dropped, asked: “As to his character in general, what sort of man is he? Is he popular, for instance?”
“No,” replied Margaret, “he is not very much liked; in fact, with the exception of Mr. Varney, he has no really intimate friends, and I have often wondered how poor Mr. Varney put up with the way he treated him. The truth is that Dan is rather a bully; he is strong, big and pugnacious and used to having his own way and somewhat brutal, at times, in his manner of getting it. He is a very self-contained, taciturn, rather secretive man and—well, perhaps he is not very scrupulous. I am not painting a very flattering picture, I am afraid.”
“It sounds like a good portrait, though,” said Thorndyke. “When you say that he is not very scrupulous, are you referring to his business transactions?”
“Well, yes; and to his dealings with people generally.”
“By the way,” asked Thorndyke, “what is his occupation?”
Margaret uttered a little apologetic laugh. “It sounds absurd, but I really don’t quite know what his business is. He is so very uncommunicative. I have always understood that he is a financier, whatever that may be. I believe he negotiates loans and buys and sells stocks and shares but he is not on the Stock Exchange. He has an office in Coleman Street in the premises of a firm of outside brokers and he keeps a clerk, a man named Levy. It seems to be quite a small establishment, though it appears to yield a fair income. That is all I can tell you, but I daresay Mr. Levy could give you other particulars if you wanted them.”