“I don’t know. It was handed to the chuprassi by a native he says he thinks was disguised.”
“Did you try changing the chuprassi’s sash?”
“Naturally. A deaf and dumb man came. He looked like a Tibetan. He approached the chuprassi and touched his sash, so the chuprassi brought him up to me. He was unquestionably deaf and dumb—stone-deaf, and half of his tongue was missing. The drums of his ears had been bored through—when he was a baby probably. I showed him the stone and he tried to take it from me. I had to have him forcibly ejected from the office; and of course I had him followed, but he disappeared utterly, after wandering aimlessly all over Delhi until nearly midnight. I have had a look-out kept, but he seems to have vanished without trace.”
“Have you drawn any conclusions?”
McGregor smiled. “I never draw them before it’s safe to say they’re proved. But a young woman almost certainly wrote that letter; Miss Sanburn’s adopted daughter—”
“Who I don’t believe exists,” said Ommony.
“—is reported by 888, who has hitherto always been reliable, to have disappeared. She disappeared, if she ever did exist, from Tilgaun; the stone unquestionably came from Tilgaun, and it seems to have been in Miss Sanburn’s possession, in the mission. Ergo—just as a flying hypothesis—Miss Sanburn’s adopted daughter may have written that letter. If so, she’s in Delhi, because the ink on that paper had not been dry more than an hour or two when it reached me.”
“Have you searched the hotels?”
“Of course. And the trains are being watched.”
“I’m curious to meet Hannah Sanburn’s adopted daughter!” said Ommony dryly. “I’ve known Hannah ever since she came to India more than twenty years ago. I’ve been co-trustee ever since Marmaduke died, and I don’t believe Hannah Sanburn has kept a single secret from me. In fact, it has been the other way; she has passed most of her difficult personal problems along to me for solution. I’ve a dozen files full of her letters, of which I dare say five per cent. are purely personal. I think I know all her private business. As recently as last year, when we met here in Delhi,—well—never mind; but if she had an adopted daughter, or an entanglement of any kind, I think I’d know it.”