As I had listened to the inspector's voice, I heard him say:
"There's another complication of this affair, Mr. Royle. Your friend could not have been Sir Digby Kemsley, for that gentleman died suddenly a year ago, at Huacho, in Peru. There was some mystery about his death, it seems, for it was reported by the British Consul at Lima. Inspector Edwards, of the C.I. Department, will call upon you this afternoon. What time could you conveniently be at home?"
I named five o'clock, and that appointment I intended, at all hazards, to keep.
The big, heavily-furnished drawing-room in Cromwell Road was dark and sombre as I stood with Phrida, who, bright and happy, pulled off her gloves and declared to her mother—that charming, sedate, grey-haired, but wonderfully preserved, woman—that she had had such "a jolly lunch."
"I saw the Redmaynes there, mother," she was saying. "Mr. Redmayne has asked us to lunch with them at the Carlton next Tuesday. Can we go?"
"I think so, dear," was her mother's reply. "I'll look at my engagements."
"Oh, do let's go! Ida is coming home from her trip to the West Indies. I do want to see her so much."
Strange it was that my well-beloved, in face of that amazing mystery, preserved such an extraordinary, nay, an astounding, calm. I was thinking of the little side-comb of green horn, for I had seen her wearing a pair exactly similar!
Standing by I watched her pale sweet countenance, full of speechless wonder.
After the first moment of suspense she had found herself treading firm ground, and now, feeling herself perfectly secure, she had assumed a perfectly frank and confident attitude.