“Now,” he said, “you go and take the girl out and I’ll see that this letter is delivered—and that you get an answer.”
I met Sylvia, and we had quite a jolly tea together. Then, at five o’clock, I left her at the door of the Ritz, saying that I had sent a letter to her uncle asking for his address, and that knowing he would be very busy preparing to leave I would not come in.
On entering the Hôtel de la Paix the concierge handed me two letters, one from old Mr. Lloyd in reply to my note and the other that had been left for me by Duperré.
“I have already left Madrid,” he wrote briefly. “Whatever you hear, you know nothing, remember. Wait another week and then come home.”
I was not long in hearing something, for within a quarter of an hour Sylvia rang me up asking me to come round at once to the Ritz.
In trepidation I took a taxi there and found old Mr. Lloyd in a state of unconsciousness, with a doctor at his side, Sylvia having found him lying on the floor of the sitting-room. The doctor told her that the old gentleman had apparently been seized by a stroke, but that he was very slowly recovering.
Sylvia, however, pointed out that his dispatch-box had been broken open and rifled. What had been taken she had no idea.
Inquiries made of the hotel staff proved that just after his niece had gone out a boy had arrived with a note requiring an answer, and had been shown up to Mr. Lloyd’s room. The old gentleman wrote the answer, and the boy left with it. To whom the answer was addressed was not known.
The only person seen in the corridor afterwards was a guest who occupied a room close by, a Spaniard named Larroca.
I recollected the name. It was the man I had seen at the Unicorn at Ripon!