“Yes,” I said excitedly as I stood within the hall, “and what else? I have reason in asking this. A great deal depends upon what you can tell me.”
“I ’ope I’m not telling anything wrong, sir,” replied the woman. “Only you’ve asked me, and I’ve told you the truth.”
“Thanks very much,” I replied. “This is all most interesting. Describe what this friend of the young lady’s was like.”
She reflected a moment, and then, telling me that he wore a dark blue suit and was a “thorough gentleman”—presumably because he had given her a tip before his departure—she described a young man which was most certainly the missing man, Stanley Audley.
I questioned her, and she became quite frank—after I had placed a couple of half-crowns into her hand—concerning the visit of Thelma and Stanley.
“They came ’ere early in the afternoon,” she said. “They’d a long talk with the doctor—a very serious talk, for when I passed the door they were only a talkin’ in whispers. I don’t like people what whisper, sir. If they can’t talk out loud there is somethin’ wrong—that’s what I always says.”
I agreed. Further, I gathered from her that the conference between Thelma, Stanley and old Feng had been most confidential.
“The young man left ’arf an ’our before the young lady,” she told me. “’E seemed very nervous, I thought. It was dark when ’e went, and as he said good-bye to the doctor, I ’eard ’im say, ‘Remember, I’m dead—as before!’ I wonder what ’e meant? I’ve been thinking over it lots of times. But, of course, sir, wot I’ve told you is all secret. I ought not to ’ave told you anything. I’ve got a good job, and I don’t want to lose it, as things are ’ard in these days, I tell you straight. So you won’t repeat to the doctor what we’ve been talkin’ about, will yer?”
“No!” I said. “Certainly not.”