“My dear Holford, why—what’s the matter?” he asked, even then quite unperturbed. “Now if I did not know you so well I might easily be annoyed, but I’m not. No doubt the loss of Mrs Holford has seriously upset you.” And the fellow actually smiled at this.
I grew furious. The mysterious man’s eyes gleamed with a triumphant light, and his pale lips parted, revealing his pointed teeth.
“You make pretence of ignorance!” I cried. “You think that I believe you when you say you know nothing of where she is, but—”
“I assure you, Holford, that these suspicions of myself are entirely groundless. I have no knowledge whatever of the lady. I have seen her once or twice at her dining-room window, it is true.”
“And yet I’ve been out to Florence, to the Grand Bretagne, where I was informed that you had been in her company!” was my hasty reply.
“I can’t help what cock-and-bull story you’ve been told by an Italian hotel-keeper. They are notorious for their untruths, as you would discover if you travelled as much up and down Italy as I do,” he said with an evil grin. “I can only tell you, once and for all, that I have no knowledge whatever of your wife’s present whereabouts.”
“Then who has?”
“How can I tell, my dear sir? You ask me a riddle. On my arrival at Charing Cross an hour ago one of my friends who met me told me of Mrs Holford’s sudden journey abroad and her disappearance into space. The story set me wondering as to the motive of the plot—for plot it undoubtedly must be. Mrs Holford and yourself, I am told, are devoted to each other. There is no reason for her leaving you, is there?”
“Understand this, Kirk,” I said. “I’ve been fooled quite long enough. As my wife has been enticed away, and is held aloof in some unknown place, I give you full and ample warning of my intention. It is to go straight to the police, and while invoking their aid to try and find her, at the same time to tell them the whole story of the affair at Sussex Place, just as I know it.”
The man half turned from me and bit his thin under-lip. His grey, furrowed countenance had become even more grey and more determined, while in his eyes I saw an evil glitter.