The Mysterious Three. William Le Queux

beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in order to devise some means of discovering Vera’s whereabouts and getting into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his best to help me, he could not trace the number.

      I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her.

      Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth—

      “There’s a lady here to see you—a Miss Thorold.”

      “Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here?” I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.

      “About ten minutes. She’s up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and she’d wait till you came back.”

      “Vera!” I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience.

      At last. She was there—in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!