“Oh! about ten minutes, sir. He seemed very busy writing, so I left him.”
“Ten minutes!” I echoed. “Six lines of writing could not take that time!”
Clearly there must be another reason why my home should have been so boldly entered, so I dashed back to my room and on opening the drawers of my roll-top desk I found three of them in disorder, as though they had been hurriedly searched.
At once I realized what had gone. All the letters I had received from Thelma I had kept tied up with pink tape because of my legal training, I suppose. They had been lying in the bottom drawer on the right hand side. It was not my habit to lock up anything from my old and trusted servant, hence the desk had not been closed down. Had it been, the drawers would have locked themselves automatically.
The letters were no longer there! The mysterious visitor had evidently sought for and found them. Was the intention to place them in the hands of the missing man? Or was it blackmail?
Every incident in the queer tangle of events seemed to add a further puzzle to the mystery of Stanley Audley and his associates. An intention to levy blackmail might explain the theft of the letter, though they were innocent enough. But they did not explain the attack on myself and the constant espionage to which I was subjected. Why should I be marked down for assassination? That I had made a foolishly romantic promise to act as guardian and protector of a pretty bride, was not enough to answer that question.
Each day that passed since that fateful afternoon amid the silent Alpine snows had increased the mystery which surrounded Stanley Audley. Was he a crook, an associate of an unscrupulous international gang of forgers—or was he after all, an honest man? If only Thelma would speak! But it was obvious her lips were sealed, and I felt convinced they were sealed by fear. Someone, it was obvious, had some hold over her which enabled him to command her silence. It was her duty as a wife, she claimed, to preserve her husband’s secrets inviolable. But what was the secret?
I returned to the office next day depressed and puzzled to the last degree. I was hardly conscious of what I was doing. As in a waking dream I lived through the agony I had gone through at Stamford. Time and again I seemed to feel that cold thing on my lips; the small, evil-looking eye I had seen in my half-consciousness seemed to glare balefully at me even in the broad daylight. And time after time, as I sat in my office striving wearily to read letters and dictate coherent replies, Thelma’s exquisite face appeared to float in the air before me. Distraught and overwrought I realized at last that work was hopeless and hurriedly left the office.
For hours I tramped the London pavements, tormented by thoughts of Thelma, racking my brain for some possible way out of the horrible position in which I found myself. It must have been far into the morning before—quite automatically—I staggered homeward and flinging myself, dressed as I was, upon my bed, fell into the deep stupor of utter exhaustion.
Four days after my return to London I happened to be passing along Pall Mall, when a sudden fancy took me to call upon old Humphreys. There another surprise awaited me.