Meanwhile, my beloved had disappeared. To my chagrin I ascertained at the hotel at Hampstead that a man had called on the day following my arrest, and that she had gone away with him, taking all her luggage.
A description of the man failed to help me to identify him. From it I decided, however, that it was not Sir Charles who had called for Vera, nor yet the mysterious Smithson. My natural inference, therefore, was that the fellow Paulton had discovered her hiding-place, and compelled her to go away with him.
I tried hard to put into practice my theory that it is useless to worry about anything, and for some days I remained passive, watching, however, the advertisement columns in the principal daily newspapers, for during our evening at the hotel, Vera had incidentally remarked that she had, while at Brighton, advertised for a bracelet she had lost, and by that means recovered it. I advertised for news of her. But there was no response.
On the Sunday, having nothing particular to do, I looked in during the afternoon at one of my usual haunts, Tattersall’s sale yard. I thought it probable I should there run across somebody or other I knew, and I was not mistaken. At the entrance I overtook a little man whose figure I could not mistake. The little sporting parson from a village outside Oakham was a great friend of mine, and he had told me that, whenever in town for a week-end he invariably went to Tattersall’s on the Sunday afternoon to see what horses were to be sold there next day.
“Not that I can afford to buy a horse, oh dear no!” I remembered him saying to me in the drawing-room at Houghton. “You know what parson’s families are. Mine is no exception to the rule!”
I had upbraided him for his lack of forethought, and he had chuckled, adding seriously that in his opinion the falling birth rate spelt the downfall of the Nation, a point upon which I had differed from him more than once.
“Hullo, Rowan!” I exclaimed, as I overtook him, and quietly slipped my arm into his from behind, making him start. “I see you spoke the truth that day.”
He was frankly delighted to see me. I knew he would be, for he is one of the few Rutlanders I have met who are wholly devoid of what some Americans term “frills.” I believe that if I were in rags and carrying a sandwich-board and I met little Rowan in the streets of London to-morrow, he would come up to me and grasp me by the hand. There are not many men of whom one can say that. I don’t suppose more than ten per cent, of my acquaintances, if as many, would look at me again if next week I became a pauper.
“What truth, and when?” he asked, in answer to my remark.
“Don’t you remember telling me,” I said, “I believe it was the last time we hunted together, that when in London you always do two things? You said: ‘I always attend service on Sunday morning, and Tattersall’s on Sunday afternoon.’ How is the old cob?”