The Four Faces: A Mystery

by William Le Queux

"And so am I," Easterton laughed.

"Of course, it was no use telling cook or the maids; they'd have got what cook calls 'styricks' or something, so then it suddenly struck me the best thing for me to do would be to come right up to town and find Aunt Hannah and tell her. I knew where she'd be, because you'd said in your telegramfour hundred and thirty Grafton Street. I didn't know where Grafton Street was, but I thought I could find outI borrowed money from cook for the railway ticket, though I didn't tell her what I wanted it for, or she wouldn't have given it to me, and directly after lunch I bicycled to Holt Stacey station and caught the train.

"I got to Grafton Street all right by a 'bus down Bond Street. There was a policeman standing near the house in Grafton Street, and when I rang the bell he came up and asked me what I wanted. I told him, and he said he thought I'd find 'the two ladies I wanted' at the Ritz Hotel. I knew where that was, and he showed me the way to get to it, down Dover Streetof course, if I'd had money enough I'd have taken taxis and got about much quicker. A giant in livery at the Ritz Hotel told me that 'two ladies answering to the description of the ladies I sought' had left the hotel about a quarter of an hour before I got there, and he didn't know where they had gone. Then I went to Brooks's to see if you were there, but you weren't, though they said you'd been there. That put the lid on it. I didn't know what to do, and I'd only got tenpence ha'penny left. I was awfully hungry, so I went and had tea and buns at the A.B.C. shop at Piccadilly Circus. While I was having tea I remembered hearing you tell Dulcie that Mr. Osborne lived at the Russell Hotel. I'd have telephoned to Mr. Osborne and explained who I was and asked him if he could tell me where I could find you, and I'd have telephoned too to your flat in South Molton Street to ask if you were there, but I'd got only fivepence ha'penny left after tea, and you might both have been out and then I'd have had only a penny-ha'penny and Paddington seemed an awfully long way to walk to, and I wasn't quite sure of the way, so I'd have had to keep asking, and that's such a bore, isn't it?

"So after tea I got on to the tube and came here and asked for Mr. Osborne. The man downstairs told me 'two gentlemen were with him,' and I asked him what they were like. He told me as well as he could, and I guessed from the description one of them must be you, and then just after the messenger had come up to ask if it was you and to tell you I was there, another hotel man turned up downstairs, and I talked to him, and he said he knew a Mr. Berrington was with Mr. Osborne because he, the man, had telephoned up your name a little while before, and Mr. Osborne had said to show you up. And so here I am, and that's all."

He stopped abruptly, breathless after his long talk, which had been delivered without an instant's pause.

"For your age you seem fairly intelligent," Jack said, with a look of amusement.

"Yes, fairly," Dick retorted. "But my brother-in-law says that 'when he was my age' the world was a much better and finer place, that the boys did wonderful things'when he was my age.' He says, for instance, that he talked Latin and Greek and German and French and one or two other languages just as you talk English, Mr. Osborne, 'when he was my age' funny how he has forgotten them all, isn't it? My sister told me only yesterday that Mike talks French fluently, but that his German 'leaves much to be desired.' Those were her words. Were all the boys wonderful when you were my age too, Mr. Osborne, can you remember? Another thing Mike says is that 'when he was my age' all boys were taught to swim by being taken to the ends of piers and flung into the seaMike says he was taught like that just as the rest were, and that he jolly well had to swim or he'd have been drowned, which seems pretty obvious, doesn't it, when you come to think of it? When did the fashion of teaching boys to swim like that go out, Mr. Osborne? I'm jolly glad it has gone out."

When I had succeeded in checking Dick's flow of talk and quelling his high spirits, and had questioned him further with regard to the man he declared to be in hiding at Holtthough without my being able to obtain from him any further informationI turned to Jack.

"What do you make of it?" I said. "What do you suggest ought to be done?"

"I think," he answered after a moment's pause, "that it affords an excellent excuse for you to run down to Holt to-night."