“Nothing yet; only be very careful. Are you coming down here?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ll ring your mistress up later on to-day. Is there any other message for me?”
“No, my mistress said nothing else, sir.”
“Very well,” I said. “Good morning!” and I rang off.
That conversation created further doubts in my mind. Here was a girl whom both Kirk and myself had seen dead, yet she was still alive, and actually acting in conjunction with him to keep her father’s death a secret! It was incomprehensible!
What could it mean?
Pelham came to me with some questions concerning the business, but I only answered mechanically. I could think of nothing—only of the mysterious, inscrutable affair in Sussex Place. The mystery had possessed my soul.
At eleven o’clock, suppressing all suspicion I held of Kershaw Kirk, I called at his house; but his sister showed me a telegram she had received soon after nine o’clock that morning. It had been handed in at Charing Cross Station, and was to the effect that he was just leaving for the Continent.
Another curious circumstance! He had gone to join that crafty-faced servant, Antonio Merli. Now that Leonard Langton had returned, he evidently thought it wise to make himself scarce. And yet Langton had calmly denied all knowledge of him!
A little before five o’clock that afternoon, while sitting in my glass office in the garage, the man Dick Drake brought me a telegram. It had been handed in at the Gare du Nord, in Paris, and was from Kirk. His enigmatical words were: