‘Soon after ten.’
The eminent physician was on the point of putting a question to him, but he stopped, as though suddenly realising that he knew the answer to the question.
‘Pardell,’ he said, speaking very seriously, ‘I am paying you £500 a year not so much for your services as for your silence. You can never ensure, no matter what price you pay, the silence of a real servant. But a gentleman ought to know how to hold his tongue if you buy him a golden gag.’
‘I thought you were dead, murdered perhaps. I found you lying on the floor,’ stammered Reggie.
‘I don’t know what had happened. I was at my wits’ end.’
Clifford’s black eyes glittered.
‘I told you when I engaged you that you were never to tell anybody what happened in this house.’
‘I am very, very sorry, sir, I only told one person.’
‘The dickens you did! And who was it?’
Nervously Reggie answered:
‘I really thought you were dead. I thought there would be an inquest. And so I told Harding—I beg your pardon, sir, Mr Harding.’
Oakleigh whistled.
‘Well, I tell you what you’ve got to do now. You’ve got to go and tell him that the whole thing was an illusion. No, wait a minute. I’ll do it. I’ll tell him that you’re suffering from a serious nervous ailment, and that I am, out of my old friendship, keeping you here in the hope of effecting a cure. You know, Reggie,’ he added kindly, ‘you’ve led such a devil of a life that such an ailment would be but a very slight punishment for your misdeeds. Yes, if everybody had their rights, old chap, you would be dead.’
‘By the by, sir,’ said Reggie, delighted at the good humour with which his master treated his indiscretion, ‘the young person next door who is employed as a housemaid tells me that she saw you in a hopeless condition being put into a four-wheeler by a woman.’
‘The deuce she does, does she?’ answered Clifford.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter what she says. I don’t want you to say anything to her or to anybody else.’
‘All right, sir.’
‘Now help me off with my coat.’
As Reggie removed it, he noticed that the dress suit was uncrumpled, that the shirt and white waistcoat were entirely fresh; the collar and tie were in perfect condition. These were not the clothes of a man who, in a drunken state, had been bundled into a cab by a woman.
But upon his face was three days’ growth of beard. His cheeks were like the wheel of a musical box. It struck Reggie as an astounding thing that the inventor of ‘Baldo’ should not take the trouble to remove this repulsive growth. Ever since he had known him Clifford Oakleigh had always been exact in his habits.
Why, in Heaven’s name, had he not taken the trouble to remove his surplus fittings?
‘THE disappearance of Miss Mingey’ occupied a large portion of the papers. Every possible and impossible hypothesis was suggested to account for it. Mr Mingey was interviewed; Mrs Mingey was interviewed; pictures of the Mingey home were reproduced in the press. A verse, not altogether in the best taste, was sung at one of the musical comedy theatres. One enterprising journal offered a prize of a life’s subscription to that journal for the most probable solution sent in by one of its readers on a detachable coupon.
The police also helped the press to elucidate the mystery. Everybody talked about the matter. Some people even went so far as to buy Mingey postcards embellished with the portrait of ‘The latest vanishing lady’.
From the details furnished with regard to the inner life of the Mingey home there were those who maintained that in all probability the unfortunate Sarah, bored to death by her dull, drab surroundings, her funereal father, her entirely uninteresting mother, and the pseudo-religious atmosphere in which she lived, had committed suicide. Several men, presumably not remarkable for the robustness of their intellect wrote her letters proposing—in the event of her not being dead—that she should become their wives. Some of these letters came from Scotland. One was from an upholsterer in Aberdeen. He stated that his name was MacTavish (which in all probability was only too true): he affirmed that his business was in a flourishing condition, and stated that he had fallen in love with her picture at first sight. He would dearly like to meet her and make her his. At the same time, he protected himself in a postscript wherein he reserved the right of withdrawing his offer in the event of the explanation of her disappearance not being satisfactory to his ‘mither’.
In this way Mingey acquired a certain amount of fame. He was spoken of by the other clerks in the Temple as the father of the vanishing lady.
This was not a subject suitable for chaff, but the melancholy and austere demeanour of Mingey had made him unpopular in the neighbourhood of the Law Courts. The feeling among his brethren was that, whatever had happened to his daughter, her present position could not be anything but an improvement on her life in the Mingey home circle.
Harding, obsessed by his great love, only gave his clerk perfunctory sympathy.
On Wednesday he telephoned to Pembroke Street. In his mind he had only the vaguest idea of what he would say to the lady. But he received a reply, presumably from a servant, to the effect that she was out of town.
‘When would she be back?’ he had asked.
But he received no definite answer.
The situation was intolerable to him. Desperately in love, he naturally felt an intense yearning for the society of the girl. He regarded it as a personal slight that she should have left town suddenly. He spent his entire time in thinking about her. But beyond her own personality he had little scope for reflection. As to her mode of life, or indeed her social status, he knew nothing. She was simply the ideal woman, that was all. And indeed the only question that remained for solution was ‘Would she regard him as the ideal man?’ He knew he was not the ideal man. No reasonable man could possibly maintain that he himself could be the ideal man in the eyes of any reasonable woman. But he devoutly hoped that, with luck and tact, he might behave in such a manner as to present to her imagination a colourable imitation of ideality.
That same evening he dined at the Gridiron with a view to picking up some cheery companion who would accompany him to a theatre or a music-hall.
Greatly to his annoyance, he found that at the long table there was no one who would afford agreeable companionship under the tension from which he suffered. There was Colonel Cazanova, a popular favourite, puffy, adipose and alcoholic, an authority on no subjects except the causes which were sending the Service to the dogs. There was Peplowe-Price, one of the leading non-actors of our day, always eager to explain to an uninterested public the faults in other people’s Hamlets. And the rest were worse.
He had just finished his oysters when he found himself patted on the back.
He looked up.
Beaming down upon him was Clifford Oakleigh. In his surprise he dropped his glass.
Then Clifford sat down by his side. A smile of amusement played about his lips.
‘My dear George, you’re suffering from nerves, eh?’
Harding had no answer ready. He simply stared vaguely at the newcomer.
Then Oakleigh burst out laughing.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘you are the limit, the absolute limit! Did you actually think I was dead? I believe you did. Looking at your face now, you are