“Left you!” he cried, removing his cigar and staring at me. “Have you quarrelled?”
“No. On my return home one night in January I found a note of farewell from her. I have heard nothing of her since. Mrs Laing disappeared on the same day.”
“Disappeared!” he gasped. My announcement had caused him the greatest consternation, for he stood agape. “Have you no idea of the reason?”
“None whatever,” I replied. Then confidentially I told him of Ella’s mysterious absences, her walk in Kensington Gardens, and her letters from the unknown individual who had met her so frequently, omitting, however, all mention either of the theft or recovery of the secret convention, for it was Lord Warnham’s wish that I should keep the existence of that instrument a profound secret.
“Have you no idea who this strange fellow is?” he inquired, sympathetically.
“Not the slightest,” I said.
“Ella was not addicted to flirtation,” he observed reflectively, a few moments later. “As you are aware, I have been acquainted with the family for some years, and have known your wife ever since she could toddle.”
“Tell me of them,” I urged impatiently. “I know scarcely anything beyond what Ella and her mother have told me. What do you know of Ella’s past?”
“You speak as if you suspected her to be an adventuress,” he said, and as the lamplight fell upon his face I saw that his lips relaxed into a good-humoured smile. “As far as I’m aware there is no incident of her life prior to marriage that will not bear the fullest investigation; and as for her mother, no more straightforward nor upright woman ever lived. Before poor Robert Laing died I was a frequent visitor at their country house, so I had ample opportunity of noticing what an affectionate family they were; and after his death it was I who succeeded in turning his great business into a limited liability concern.”
To outsiders Beck was a swaggering parvenu, who delighted in exhibiting his wealth to others by giving expensive dinners and indulging in extravagances of speech and beverage; but towards me he had always been honestly outspoken and unassuming—in fact, a typical successful business man, with whose unruffled good humour I had, even when madly jealous of his attentions to Ella, found it impossible to quarrel. I had long ago grown to ridicule the suggestion that any secret had existed between them, and now felt instinctively that he was my friend.