“Why not be frank with me, Mrs. Hartsilver,” he said, lowering his voice. “She did spend the night on the boat with him, and you know it.”
Cora looked terribly alarmed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, doctor,” she exclaimed, “don’t let anybody know! Think what would be said, the inference that would be drawn, especially as they are engaged. I will be frank with you, then. I was with friends at Henley, and Yootha was to have met me at ten o’clock at night, and we were to have returned to town together. But she did not meet me, and I, thinking she must have gone back to London alone, returned with my friends. As soon as I got home I rang up her flat, and her maid said she had not come in; the maid was sitting up, awaiting her. I was dreadfully upset, and blamed myself for having missed her.
“Next morning, about noon, she came to my house, looking very ill and worried. She said that she and Captain Preston had forgotten all about the time until it was too late to meet me, also by then the last train had gone. Captain Preston tried everywhere to find a bed for her, but there was not one to be had. Finally there was nothing for it but for her to return with the captain to his house-boat, where he gave her his bed and slept himself in his servant’s bed, while his servant slept outside in a deck-chair. That is what she told me, and I believe every word, because she couldn’t lie to me. There was no harm in it at all, believe me, there was not, but of course it would not do for people to know. Nobody knows but you and Captain Preston’s servant, a man absolutely to be trusted not to talk.”
“And Miss Hagerston’s maid. At least she knows that her mistress did not come home.”
Johnson began to pace the room.
“Of course I shall treat what you have just told me as strictly confidential,” he said, “but the fact remains that we don’t know what happened during the time Preston and Miss Hagerston left Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s house-boat, and the time, late at night, when they returned to his own house-boat.”
“What do you imply?” Cora asked sharply, drawing herself up.
“Forgive me if I have conveyed a wrong impression,” Johnson said, stopping in his walk. “I assure you I did not mean to imply what you think. Nothing was further from my mind. No, my thoughts were traveling in quite a different channel. Tell me, Mrs. Hartsilver, are Miss Hagerston and Captain Preston now on terms of intimacy with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson? They appeared to be the other day, and I was surprised, because I was under the impression that their acquaintanceship with her had for some time past been, how shall I put it—rather strained?”
“Indeed it was more than rather strained,” Cora answered quickly. “Mrs. Robertson detests Yootha almost as much as she detests me, and I think I am safe in saying that she bears Captain Preston no love at all. As we are speaking in confidence I may as well tell you that Miss Hagerston, Captain Preston, myself, and one or two others have for some months past suspected Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and her friends, Mr. Aloysius Stapleton and Mr. Archie La Planta, of being impostors of some sort, if nothing worse; we have reasons for suspecting this. Consequently we have been making private inquiries about them of the Metropolitan Secret Agency and other sources, and this, I think, they have got to know. Captain Preston and Yootha accepted their invitation to tea on their house-boat chiefly out of curiosity, I believe, and were greatly surprised at the exceptionally friendly reception accorded them. I think they made a mistake in associating with Mrs. Robertson at all in the circumstances.”