“Then it is only a surmise on your part, after all, my dear sir,” remarked the detective, twisting a pen between his fingers as his dark eyes were fixed upon mine. “The actual evidence is really nil. That is just the view taken by the Commissioner.”
“But my wife is in the hands of the assassins,” I cried. “You can’t deny that!”
“Is there any actual, evidence of it? None, as far as we can see,” he declared. “Would it not be natural for your wife, on failing to find you in Florence, either to wire to her sister at home or to return home at once? She did neither, which only goes far to prove that she did not desire to return to London.”
“You suggest that she has purposely left me?” I cried, staring at the man in a frenzy of angry resentment.
“I suggest nothing, Mr Holford. Pray don’t misunderstand me. I merely put before you the facts in order to obtain a logical conclusion. Only one can be arrived at—she had some motive for not returning to her home. If she had, then how are we to find her? She would, no doubt, purposely cover her tracks.”
“But she was with that man, the man who—”
“And that just bears out my argument,” interrupted the detective.
“But may she not have been prevented from sending any message home?” I suggested, though that very point he had made had, I confess, been the one which had continually obsessed me.
Both the detectives shook their heads.
“No,” replied the elder of the two. “We are both agreed, as the Commissioner also believes, that your wife would not be held a prisoner. Criminals do not hold women prisoners nowadays, except in works of fiction. No,” he added, “depend upon it, Mr Holford, when you discover the truth, you will find that your wife was acquainted with one or other of these friends of yours, and that her disappearance was part of a plan.”