“Extraordinary!” I said. “What you tell me sounds like some remarkable fairy tale.”
“The balance at your banker’s is sufficient proof that what I say is truth,” he remarked. “There may be a good many fairy tales in certain prospectuses, but there certainly is none in your financial soundness.”
We wandered on from room to room. There must, I think, have been quite thirty sleeping apartments, guests’ rooms, etc, all furnished in that same glaring style, that greenery-yellow abomination miscalled art.
“The next room,” explained my secretary, as we approached the end of the corridor, “is Mrs Heaton’s boudoir. I expect she’s in there. I saw Dalton, her maid, enter a moment ago.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, leave her alone!” I said, turning at once on my heel. I had no wish to meet that awful rejuvenated hag again.
I fancy Gedge smiled, but if he did he was very careful to hide his amusement from me. He was, without doubt, a very well-trained secretary.
The thought of Mabel Anson crossed my mind. All the recollections of the dinner on the previous night, and the startling discoveries I subsequently made recurred to me at that moment, and I felt dazed and bewildered. This painted and powdered person could surely not be my wife, when I loved Mabel Anson with all my soul! Only yesterday I had sat at her side at dinner, and had felt the pressure of her soft, delicate hand upon mine. No; it could not be that I was actually married. Such a thing was utterly impossible, for surely no man could go through the marriage ceremony without knowing something about it.
Hickman’s treachery angered me. Why, I wondered, had he enticed me to his rooms in order to make that extraordinary attempt upon my life? The wound upon my head was undoubtedly due to the blow he had dealt me. The theory that I had accidentally knocked my head against the marble statue and broken it was, I felt assured, only one of that fool Britten’s brilliant ideas with which he misled his too-confiding patients. If this were so, then all the incidents subsequent to my recovery of consciousness were part of the conspiracy which had commenced on the previous night with Hickman’s attempt.
We descended the stairs, passing the footman Gill, who with a bow, said—
“I hope, sir, you feel better.”