“Yes—only once, as far as I know.”
“I suppose you don’t expect the family back till the end of September—eh?”
“Oh, not before the middle of October. They’ll stay there through the shooting.”
Other questions I put to her she answered frankly, and I left a coin in her hand as I turned and went down the steps. Why, I wondered, had her ladyship thought fit to introduce Beryl to me as Feo Ashwicke?
In deep disappointment I returned to Rowan Road. Every effort I made seemed unavailing.
As the weeks passed in inactivity, and I was still Bob’s guest, assisting him among the few patients who rang the surgery bell, I began to feel that I must stir myself and find a fresh post as assistant. Rather than borrow off Bob, I had slid into a pawnbroker’s one evening and exchanged the watch which my mother had given me in my schoolboy days for two pounds and a ticket upon which was inscribed a false name and address. Of this money only a few shillings remained, and I was existing upon my friend’s charity.
While in this unsettled state of mind I was called out one morning to visit a patient over in Brook Green, and on my return entered a saloon-bar opposite Hammersmith Station for a glass of that homely and inexpensive beverage vulgarly known as “bitter.” Upon the counter before me the London Post-office Directory lay open, and of a sudden it occurred to me that I had never searched for the name of Ashwicke.
I turned over the pages curiously until I reached that headed “Ash,” and suddenly, half-way down, I came across the name I wanted: “Ashwicke, Alan Wynd, 94, Queen’s-gate Gardens, S.W.”
Without hesitation I went forth and mounted an omnibus, which set me down at the corner of the Cromwell Road, and ten minutes later I stood before the house which the directory indicated.
Instantly I saw that its exterior was identical—a large grey place with a great dark portico supported by four huge columns. It was the house to which I had been called on the day the strange marriage had taken place.