At that moment Sheppard, the old-fashioned butler who had just entered the room, interrupted, saying in his quiet way:
“I haven’t seen Mr. Pryor before, madam.” Then turning to Ronnie, he said: “The telephone rang at about a quarter to one. I answered it. Somebody—a man’s voice—was speaking from Liverpool. He wanted you, sir. But I said you were out. He told me to give you a message,” and he handed Ronnie a slip of paper upon which were pencilled the words:
“Please tell Mr. Ronald Pryor that Mark Marx has returned. He will be in London at the old place at ten o’clock to-night.”
As Ronald Pryor’s eyes fell upon that message all the light died from his face.
Beryl noticed it, and asked her lover whether he had received bad news. He started. Then, recovering himself instantly, he held his breath for a second, and replied:
“Not at all, dear. It is only from a friend—a man whom I believed had been killed, but who is well and back again in England.”
“There must be many such cases,” the fair-haired girl remarked. “I heard of one the other day when a man reported dead a year ago, and for whom his widow was mourning, suddenly walked into his own drawing-room.”
“I hope his return was not unwelcome?” said Ronnie with a laugh. “It would have been a trifle awkward, for example, if the widow had re-married in the meantime.”
“Yes, rather a queer situation—at least, for the second husband,” declared Iris, who was some five years Beryl’s senior, and the mother of two pretty children.
“Did the person who spoke to you give any name?” asked Pryor of the butler.