“That is what I didn’t know. I knew the name of this hotel and made up my mind to come here, and when the hotel porter who meets the trains asked if I had any luggage I had to invent a dressing-bag and dress-basket; I could always pretend that they had gone astray. I gave him the name of Smith, and presently he emerged from a confused pile of luggage and passengers with a dressing-bag and dress-basket labelled Kestrel-Smith. I had to take them; I don’t see what else I could have done.”
Jerton said nothing, but he rather wondered what the lawful owner of the baggage would do.
“Of course it was dreadful arriving at a strange hotel with the name of Kestrel-Smith, but it would have been worse to have arrived without luggage. Anyhow, I hate causing trouble.”
Jerton had visions of harassed railway officials and distraught Kestrel-Smiths, but he made no attempt to clothe his mental picture in words. The lady continued her story.
“Naturally, none of my keys would fit the things, but I told an intelligent page boy that I had lost my key-ring, and he had the locks forced in a twinkling. Rather too intelligent, that boy; he will probably end in Dartmoor. The Kestrel-Smith toilet tools aren’t up to much, but they are better than nothing.”
“If you feel sure that you have a title,” said Jerton, “why not get hold of a peerage and go right through it?”
“I tried that. I skimmed through the list of the House of Lords in ‘Whitaker,’ but a mere printed string of names conveys awfully little to one, you know. If you were an army officer and had lost your identity you might pore over the Army List for months without finding out who your were. I’m going on another tack; I’m trying to find out by various little tests who I am not—that will narrow the range of uncertainty down a bit. You may have noticed, for instance, that I’m lunching principally off lobster Newburg.”
Jerton had not ventured to notice anything of the sort.
“It’s an extravagance, because it’s one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, but at any rate it proves that I’m not Lady Starping; she never touches shell-fish, and poor Lady Braddleshrub has no digestion at all; if I am her I shall certainly die in agony in the course of the afternoon, and the duty of finding out who I am will devolve on the press and the police and those sort of people; I shall be past caring. Lady Knewford doesn’t know one rose from another and she hates men, so she wouldn’t have spoken to you in any case; and Lady Mousehilton flirts with every man she meets—I haven’t flirted with you, have I?”
Jerton hastily gave the required assurance.