“Absolutely nothing,” I said despairingly. “I wrote to her some days ago, but had no reply.”
“Your letter is here. It came on the night she left. I recognized your handwriting. I believe she is in London, and that she sent me that reassuring telegram from Waterloo, but the police do not believe it. They doubt that she ever went to London.”
“Who says so? The local police?”
“One of the two detectives who came down from London yesterday to see me.”
“But that telegram which she burned,” I asked. “Who was the sender. Have you any suspicion?”
“I feel quite certain that it was from Stanley.”
“Then if she is with her husband, why should we worry?” I asked.
“Because—well, because I have a strange intuition that there is something seriously wrong. Why, I can’t tell—a mother’s intuition is usually right, Mr. Yelverton.”
“Is that really all you know?” I asked eagerly. “Cannot I be of any service in assisting to trace her?”
“Well, the police are evidently doing their best,” was her reply. “There is one queer circumstance about the affair, namely that on the day before she received the telegram, a stranger called to see her. We had just had dinner when he was announced. He was a tall, thin, fair-haired young man, and he asked to see Thelma. She saw him in the morning-room, and she was alone with him for about ten minutes or so. After he left she seemed to be wonderfully elated. She would tell me nothing, only that some good news had been imparted to her by the stranger. I asked her why she did not confide in me, but she replied that it was her own affair, and that at the moment she was not allowed to divulge it. Later on she would tell me all. Then next day she received the telegram which she had apparently been expecting, and left.