Half an hour later the liftman’s wife, on pretence of going to Mildmay’s room to see that all was straight, admitted Falconer, who had a good look round. He examined the half-horse electric motor, and found to it attached two high-tension wires through the wall into the locked room.
“That’s his lordship’s dining-room,” said the stout, youngish woman. “I can’t think why Mr. Mildmay keeps it locked up so securely. Sometimes I think I smell a funny smell, like paint, but I’m not quite certain. It may be my fancy. Mr. Mildmay is out golfing at Berkhampstead to-day.”
Falconer passed into the sitting-room, when the first object that greeted him was a cabinet photograph of Madame Claudet!
He had not been mistaken. What connection could the rich Chicago widow have with the man who kept his dining-room locked with a Yale latch?
The mystery deepened. A problem was presented which to Geoffrey Falconer was fascinating. Madame was rich and well known in society. What possible connection could she have with that man in England—the man to whom she had sent a message in cipher. Cipher telegrams are quite admissible in official correspondence, and also in business, but when used for private communication are always suspect—except perhaps between lovers.
“I’d like to see Mr. Mildmay,” Geoffrey told the porter, who, in reply, declared that the gentleman usually came home about six o’clock, dressed, and then went out to his club for dinner.
So just before six o’clock Falconer returned to Ryder Street and watched the entrance of the chambers. He had waited for ten minutes or so when a well-dressed fair-haired man of about forty, in golf clothes, alighted from a taxi and, carrying his clubs, went inside. Then, a second later, the liftman appeared in the doorway, and gave the arranged signal that he was the person Falconer desired to see.
There was certainly nothing suspicious about Mr. Mildmay’s appearance. He was an ordinary man of leisure, who had been out in the country golfing.
Day by day, Geoffrey’s work taking him to Witham, he was able from time to time to glance at the rapidly moving pen of the “recorder.” He was wondering if any more messages of mystery would come through from the American widow. Each day he looked at the register of wireless messages received from Paris, but the name of Mildmay did not appear. He told nobody of the suspicion which had arisen in his mind. As a servant of the Marconi Company, he, like servants of the Post-Office, was sworn to preserve the secrecy of messages, and this he did. He merely watched and waited, even without telling his father.
Yet somehow—why, he could not himself tell—he felt that he would like to see more of the widow’s mysterious friend. With that object he one night put on his dinner clothes, and waited in Ryder Street until Mildmay appeared, when he followed him unseen to a small and cosy restaurant in Jermyn Street. Scarcely had Mildmay taken his seat at a table against the wall when Geoffrey also entered and took a seat near him, pretending, of course, to take no interest in anything further than the menu which the waiter handed him.