“Who met me, then?”
“I really don’t know,” she answered. “This is the first time I have approached you, and I only come to you now in order to ask you to grant me a favour—a very great favour.”
“A favour! What is it?”
“I cannot explain here, in the street,” she said quickly. “If you will come to my hotel I will place the facts before you.”
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Bath Hotel, in Arlington Street.”
I knew the place well. It stood at the corner of Arlington Street and Piccadilly, and was an eminently respectable, old-fashioned place, patronised by a high-class clientèle.
“And you are alone?” I inquired, thinking it strange that she should thus ask me to her hotel.
“Of course. I have come to London expressly to see you,” she responded. “I went down to Budleigh-Salterton two days ago, but I ascertained at Denbury that you had left suddenly.”
“Whom did you see there?” I inquired, much interested.