"Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was taken?" I inquired.
"I can't tell, sir," she replied. "I've only been here a year, and you see the date—over two years ago."
"The photographer would know, perhaps?"
"He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have remained."
"Ah! that's unfortunate," I said, greatly disappointed; and having copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I thanked her and left.
Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma Heath?
The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange attraction for me.
Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable and yet forcible—a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it from its frame on board the Lola and destroyed it that first aroused my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.
Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.
At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.