“Mrs Anson is out of town, sir,” answered the man. “The house is let.”
“Furnished?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is your mistress at home?” I inquired.
“I don’t know, sir,” answered the man, diplomatically.
“Oh, of course!” I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. “Will you take this to your mistress, and ask her if she will kindly spare me a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs Anson’s.”
“I’ll see if she’s at home, sir,” said the man, dubiously; and then, asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in search of his mistress.
That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that within that room the young man whose name I knew not had been foully done to death. There was the very umbrella stand from which I had taken the walking-stick, and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that night when I had dined there at Mrs Anson’s invitation—the last night of my existence as my real self.
The man returned in a few moments and invited me into a room on the left—the morning-room, I supposed it to be—saying:
“My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you.”