"Has he any friends who are foreigners?" I inquired.
"Not that I know of," was the girl's reply. And I thought she regarded me rather strangely. Why, I could not conceive. Her name was Annie Whybrow, she told me, and then, unable to detain her longer I allowed her to re-enter the house.
Vera's story of the coffin being taken into that mysterious house in Brunswick Road, combined with the non-return of the pretty Nella, was certainly mystifying.
I returned to London, saw Vera, and we resolved to wire to Ray at Selkirk asking him to return to London as soon as possible.
That night, and the next, I haunted the usual resorts of foreigners in the West End, the underground Café de l'Europe, the Spaten beer-hall in Leicester Square, the Café Monico, the Gambrinus, and other places, in order to discover the young Italian. On the second evening I was successful, for I saw him in the Monico, and on inquiring of a man I knew, I learnt that his name was Uberto Mellini, that until recently he had lived in Paris, and that at the present moment he was staying in a house in Dean Street, Soho.
At midnight, when I returned to Bloomsbury, I found Vera and Ray anxiously awaiting me. The latter had only arrived in London from Scotland an hour before, and his fiancée had evidently told him of the curious events which had transpired and the sinister mystery surrounding the young girl's disappearance.
"I can see no reason for it at all," he declared, when we commenced to discuss the situation. "It's quite plain that our friends the enemy are actively at work, but surely the fact that Nella is missing would put the Professor upon his guard. This young Italian Mellini is evidently a new importation, and has pretended to form an attachment for Nella for some ulterior object."
"Certainly," I said. "But what do you make of the incident of the coffin?"
"There has been no funeral from that house in Brunswick Road?"
"Not as far as I can gather."