Again I referred to the loss of my wife, declaring that if I found her I would willingly forgo all further investigation into the Professor’s death.
The handsome girl exchanged glances with her lover, glances which showed me plainly that they were acting in accordance with some premeditated plan. Leonard Langton was a sharp, shrewd, far-seeing man, or he would never have held the appointment of private secretary to Sir Albert Oppenheim.
“Well, Mr Holford,” he said, “why don’t you speak candidly and openly? You are, I take it, eager to make terms with your enemies, eh?”
“But who are my enemies?” I cried blankly. “As far as I’m aware, I’ve made none!”
“A man arouses enmity often without intention,” was his reply. “I cannot, of course, tell who are these enemies of yours, but it is evident from your statement the other day at Wimpole Street that they are responsible for your wife’s disappearance.”
“Well,” I said, “you are right. I am open to make terms if Mabel is given back at once to me.”
“And what are they?” asked Ethelwynn, whose very eagerness condemned her.
“Pardon me, Miss Greer,” I said rather hastily, “but I cannot discern in what manner my matrimonial affairs can interest you.”
“Oh—er—well,” she laughed nervously, “of course they don’t really—only your wife’s disappearance has struck me as very remarkable.”
“No, Miss Greer,” I said, “not really so remarkable as it at first appears. My own inquisitiveness was the cause of her being enticed away, so that I might be drawn off the investigation I had undertaken—the inquiry into who killed Professor Greer.”