Mention of the theatre afforded me an opportunity of putting to her a question upon which, during the past couple of hours, I had reflected deeply.
“You’ve, of course, been to the Exhibition at Earl’s Court, living here in the immediate vicinity,” I said.
“I’ve only been once,” she answered. “Although we’ve had this house nearly two years, exhibitions don’t appeal to me very much. I was there at night, and the gardens were prettily illuminated, I thought.”
“Yes,” I said. “With the exception of the gardens, there is far too much pasteboard scenic effect. I suppose you noticed that serrated line of mountains over which the eternal switchback runs? Those self-same mountains, repainted blue, grey, or purple, with tips of snow, have, within my personal knowledge, done duty as the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, and the Atlas, not counting half a dozen other notable ranges.”
She laughed, slowly fanning herself the while.
By her reply I had obtained from her own lips a most important fact in the inquiry I intended now to prosecute, namely, that this house had been her home for nearly two years. Therefore it had been in Mrs Anson’s possession at the time of the tragedy.
Since the moment when I had first recognised that; room as the one in which I had been present on the night of the mysterious assassination, the possibility had more than once occurred to me that Mrs Anson might have; unwittingly taken it ready furnished after the committal of the crime. Such, however, was not the fact. Mabel had asserted that for nearly two years she had lived, there.
Again, even as I sat there at her side, deep in admiration of her magnificent figure in that striking toilette of coral-pink, with its soft garniture of lace and chiffons, I could not help reflecting upon the curious fact that she should have recognised the dead man’s pencil-case. And she had, by her silence, assented to my suggestion that he had been her lover. That little gold pencil-case that I had found in his pocket when he lay dead at that very spot where we were now sitting had been one of her love-gifts to him.
The mystery hourly grew more puzzling and bewildering. Yet so also each hour that I was at her side I fell deeper and deeper in love with her, longing always for opportunity to declare to her the secret of my heart, yet ever fearing to do so lest she should turn from me.
Our unexpected meeting at Grosvenor Gate, after I had received that letter from my anonymous correspondent, combined with the startling discovery that it was actually in her house that the mysterious tragedy had been enacted; that in that very room the smart, refined young man who had been her lover had fought so fiercely for life, and had yet been struck down so unerringly, formed an enigma inscrutable and perplexing.