“Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten minutes ago.”
“Saw them!” I gasped. “Where?”
“In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here. They turned up Dover Street, and went down in the tube lift.”
“Are you positive?”
“Quite. I couldn’t well forget them. They were walking together, laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss. I admire that kind of nerve.”
Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold’s house in Belgrave Street. The hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises.
It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor.
What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy’s age. Experts put their heads together, and put on their spectacles. Some were of the opinion that it must be centuries old. Sir Charles, the one man who might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be questioned. Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from his confrères. A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in Belgrave Street had been dead “less than twenty years.” Further, he pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico. He believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican.
The news of Sir Charles’ condition was more satisfactory that evening, inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he was still no worse. Perhaps, after all, Dr Agnew had been mistaken. Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my darling’s.
“I think,” I said to Vera, whose spirits rose a little when she heard my report, “that to-morrow morning I will run down to Oakham, to have another look at Houghton.”