“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”
In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.
Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!
Chapter Eighteen.
I Draw the Impostor.
Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.
From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.
Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.