“But that remark about Little Thelma,” I said. “The fellow just before he died expressed a hope that she might be happy and that was his only wish. ‘Let her discover the truth,’ he said.”
“Which plainly shows that, whatever we may surmise, Thelma does not know the truth,” my partner remarked, leaning back in his writing chair.
With that I agreed. Yet our discovery threw no light on the friendship between the two men who had met at Mürren, the Doctor and old Humphreys; their friendship with the foppish young fellow who was a friend of Stanley’s and was now proved to be one of a gang of forgers, and on Thelma’s secret friendship with old Feng.
I rang up Bexhill half-an-hour later, and over the ’phone told Thelma that I had ascertained definitely that the man fatally injured in the motor accident in France was not her husband.
She drew a long sigh of relief.
“It is really awfully good of you, Mr. Yelverton, to take such a keen interest in me and go to all that trouble.”
“I know the truth as far as the report of Stanley’s accident goes—not the whole truth, Mrs. Audley,” I said. “I only wish I did. Won’t you give me the key to the situation.”
I heard her laugh lightly, a strange hollow laugh it was.
“Ah! I only wish—I only wish I dare,” she replied. Then she added, “Good-bye. What you have told me relieves my mind greatly and also places a new complexion upon things. Good-bye, Mr. Yelverton—and a thousand thanks. Mother is here and sends her best wishes.”
I acknowledged them, and we were then cut off.