“That’s all very well; but, after all your exertions, you’ve really discovered absolutely nothing.”
His words were, alas! only too true. I had made many discoveries, but each of them had only served to render the veil of mystery more impenetrable.
“But why do you urge me to give it up?”
“For your own sake,” he responded. “You can’t practise properly when your head is full of such a bewildering puzzle. Don’t you see that in this affair your reputation is at stake?”
“But her life is of greater moment to me than my own reputation,” I declared. “Let me have my own way, there’s a good chap.” And I wished him good-bye.
An hour later I became installed as temporary assistant to a surgeon in Richmond Road, Bayswater, who, having been “run down” by the unusual number of cases of influenza, had resolved to take a month’s vacation.
The Bayswater surgeon proved a genial fellow, but I saw little of him, for he left for North Wales with his family early next morning, after handing me his visiting-book and giving me general instructions. A fortnight went by, and so large was the practice—for I had to attend a number of the large drapery establishments in Westbourne Grove, where my principal was medical officer—that I had but little leisure. To forget the strange enigma which so troubled my brain I had thrown myself heartily into the work.
One hot, oppressive evening, after I had been in Richmond Road about three weeks, I was busy seeing the patients who, crowding the waiting-room between the hours of seven and nine, entered the consulting-room one by one to describe their physical ills, when the servant came in with a card, saying—
“A lady wishes to see you at once, sir.”
I took the card she handed me, and started with mingled surprise and satisfaction when I recognised the name—Lady Pierrepoint-Lane. At last she was in London again! But how, I wondered had she discovered my whereabouts. Quickly I went into the hall, and there found her with blanched face and in a state of great agitation.