Mr Johnson felt a pleasurable sense of elation when he embarked on the mission assigned him by his chief. If he could discover anything that would help to elucidate or solve what was known amongst the select few as “the Monkton Mystery,” rapid promotion was assured.
Smeaton was not a jealous man, and besides, if Johnson did score a success, it was his senior who had given him the materials to work upon.
Still, although pleasantly elated, he did not disguise from himself the difficulties of his task. He had to find out where Lady Wrenwyck was hiding—she was hiding, of course, or her whereabouts would have been known to her household. And he did not know the woman by sight.
He grappled with the smaller difficulty first, when he met his cousin the footman, at their usual meeting-place.
“Any chance of getting a peep at a photograph of her ladyship?” he asked. He had told Willet, such was his name, as much as it was good for him to know, and no more.
“I’m very friendly with several of the Wrenwyck lot,” was Willet’s reply. “I daresay I could smuggle one out for you for half-an-hour, but it’s exciting suspicion, isn’t it? And I suppose you don’t want to take too many people into your confidence?”
Johnson agreed with this sentiment emphatically. He could swallow any amount of confidence himself, but he hated reciprocity. Hear everything, and tell nothing, or, at the worst, as little as you can. That was his motto.
“It would lead to gossip, and we should have to fudge up some tale or other, Dick. We’ll let it alone for the present, and only use it as a last resource.”
Mr Willet reflected, and then he remembered. “Look here. I’ve just thought of the very thing! I’ve a lot of old illustrated newspapers by me. Not very long ago there was a full-page portrait of her, in fancy dress at the Devonshire House ball—Queen of Sheba or something. It’s a splendid likeness. If you once see it, you’d pick her out from a thousand. Stay here for ten minutes, and I’ll hunt it out and bring it round.”
Willet was as good as his word. In a little over the time he had stated, the portrait was in Johnson’s hands, and carefully scrutinised. In the words of his cousin, wherever he met Lady Wrenwyck he would “pick her out of a thousand.”