“Yes,” I said, “it is certainly rather remarkable,” and together we walked to the corner of Leicester Street, where there is another exit of the theatre, but my pretty companion could discover neither of the ladies who had accompanied her.
Her voice was low and refined, her well-gloved hands small; yet her severe style of dress seemed to speak of poverty which she would fain conceal. She wore no jewellery, not even a brooch; and I fell to wondering whether she might be a governess, or perhaps a shop-assistant who had come from a provincial town to “better herself” in London.
For fully a quarter of an hour we strolled together, backwards and forwards before the railings of the Empire, which soon became dark and deserted, until we were practically the only loiterers. It certainly struck me as more than strange that her companions, knowing her to be a stranger to London, should thus leave her to her own devices in Leicester Square at midnight. Again, it was curious that she herself should only know the name of the road, and not the district.
“You said your friends live in Ellerdale Street,” I exclaimed at last, after we had been chatting about the performance, and she had criticised the singers with an artlessness which betrayed that she was entirely unaccustomed to the music-hall. “The best course will be to ask a cabman.”
A hansom was standing at the kerb.
“Do you know of any street named Ellerdale Street?” I asked the driver.
“No, sir, I don’t,” he answered, after a pause, during which time he thought deeply. “There’s Ellerslie Road up in Shep’erd’s Bush, and Ellesmere Road out at Bow, but I don’t know of any others.” Then, turning to another man on a cab behind him, he asked:
“I say, Sandy, do you know Ellerdale Street?”
“No, don’t know it at all. Ask a policeman,” was the other’s gruff response.
“I’m giving you a lot of trouble,” my companion said apologetically. “It is really too bad, and you must think me very foolish to get separated from my friends like this. How it occurred I really don’t know. They went out in front of me, and the crowd kept me from coming out of my seat. Then, when I got into the promenade I found they had vanished, as if by magic.”