“Perhaps, Miss Tennison, you knew him under some other name,” I said, and then proceeded to describe minutely the handsome, rather foreign-looking man who had bribed me to give that certificate of death.
“Have you an uncle?” I asked presently, recollecting that the man at Stretton Street had declared the victim to be his niece.
“I have an uncle—my mother’s brother—he lives in Liverpool.”
Again I fell to wondering whether the beautiful girl before me was actually the same person whose death I had certified to be due to heart disease, and who, according to the official records, had been cremated. She was very like—and yet? Well, the whole affair was a problem which each hour became more inscrutable.
Still the fact remained that Gabrielle Tennison had disappeared suddenly on November the seventh, the night I had met with my amazing adventure.
In reply to my further questions, as she sat staring blankly into my face with those great dark eyes of hers, I at last gathered that Doctor Moroni, hearing of her case from a specialist in Harley Street, to whom she had been taken by the police-surgeon, had called upon her mother, and had had a long interview with her. Afterwards he had called daily, and later Mrs. Tennison had allowed him to take her daughter to Florence to consult another specialist at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
“I think you know a Mrs. Cullerton,” I remarked at last.
The effect of my words upon her was almost electrical.
“Dolly Cullerton!” she shrieked. “Ah! Don’t mention that woman’s name! Please do not mention her!”
“I believed that she was a friend of yours,” I said, much surprised.