The Evil Shepherd Part 24

"I did," he replied. "I began when we were out alone together. She gave me no encouragement to speak of, but at any rate she knows."

Lady Cynthia leaned a little forward in her place.

"Do you know where she is now?"

He was a little startled.

"Down at the cottage, I suppose. The butler told me that she never rose before midday."

"Then for once the butler was mistaken," his companion told him.

"Margaret Hilditch left at six o'clock this morning. I saw her in travelling clothes get into the car and drive away."

"She left the cottage this morning before us?" Francis repeated, amazed.

"I can a.s.sure you that she did," Lady Cynthia insisted. "I never sleep, amongst my other peculiarities," she went on bitterly, "and I was lying on a couch by the side of the open window when the car came for her. She stopped it at the bend of the avenue--so that it shouldn't wake us up, I suppose. I saw her get in and drive away."

Francis was silent for several moments. Lady Cynthia watched him curiously.

"At any rate," she observed, "in whatever mood she went away this morning, you have evidently succeeded in doing what I have never seen any one else do--breaking through her indifference. I shouldn't have thought that anything short of an earthquake would have stirred Margaret, these days."

"These days?" he repeated quickly. "How long have you known her?"

"We were at school together for a short time," she told him. "It was while her father was in South America. Margaret was a very different person in those days."

"However was she induced to marry a person like Oliver Hilditch?"

Francis speculated.

His companion shrugged her shoulders.

"Who knows?" she answered indifferently. "Are you going to drop me?"

"Wherever you like."

"Take me on to Grosvenor Square, if you will, then," she begged, "and deposit me at the ancestral mansion. I am really rather annoyed about Margaret," she went on, rearranging her veil. "I had begun to have hopes that you might have revived my taste for normal things."

"If I had had the slightest intimation--" he murmured.

"It would have made no difference," she interrupted dolefully. "Now I come to think of it, the Margaret whom I used to know--and there must be plenty of her left yet--is just the right type of woman for you."

They drew up outside the house in Grosvenor Square. Lady Cynthia held out her hand.

"Come and see me one afternoon, will you?" she invited.

"I'd like to very much," he replied.

She lingered on the steps and waved her hand to him--a graceful, somewhat insolent gesture.

"All the same, I think I shall do my best to make you forget Margaret,"

she called out. "Thanks for the lift up. A bientot!"

CHAPTER XX

Francis drove direct from Grosvenor Square to his chambers in the Temple, and found Shopland, his friend from Scotland Yard, awaiting his arrival.

"Any news?" Francis enquired.

"Nothing definite, I am sorry, to say," was the other's reluctant admission.

Francis hung up his hat, threw himself into his easy-chair and lit a cigarette.

"The lad's brother is one of my oldest friends, Shopland," he said. "He is naturally in a state of great distress."

The detective scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"I said 'nothing definite' just now, sir," he observed. "As a rule, I never mention suspicions, but with you it is a different matter. I haven't discovered the slightest trace of Mr. Reginald Wilmore, or the slightest reason for his disappearance. He seems to have been a well-conducted young gentleman, a little extravagant, perhaps, but able to pay his way and with nothing whatever against him. Nothing whatever, that is to say, except one almost insignificant thing."

"And that?"

"A slight tendency towards bad company, sir. I have heard of his being about with one or two whom we are keeping our eye upon."

"Bobby Fairfax's lot, by any chance?"

Shopland nodded.

"He was with Jacks and Miss Daisy Hyslop, a night or two before he disappeared. I am not sure that a young man named Morse wasn't of the party, too."

"What do you make of that lot?" Francis asked curiously. "Are they gamesters, dope fiends, or simply vicious?"

The detective was silent. He was gazing intently at his rather square-toed shoes.

"There are rumours, sir," he said, presently, "of things going on in the West End which want looking into very badly--very badly indeed. You will remember speaking to me of Sir Timothy Brast?"

"I remember quite well," Francis acknowledged.

"I've nothing to go on," the other continued. "I am working almost on your own lines, Mr. Ledsam, groping in the dark to find a clue, as it were, but I'm beginning to have ideas about Sir Timothy Brast, just ideas."

"As, for instance?"

"Well, he stands on rather queer terms with some of his acquaintances, sir. Now you saw, down at Soto's Bar, the night we arrested Mr. Fairfax, that not one of those young men there spoke to Sir Timothy as though they were acquainted, nor he to them. Yet I happened to find out that every one of them, including Mr. Fairfax himself, was present at a party Sir Timothy Brast gave at his house down the river a week or two before."

"I'm afraid there isn't much in that," Francis declared. "Sir Timothy has the name of being an eccentric person everywhere, especially in this respect--he never notices acquaintances. I heard, only the other day, that while he was wonderfully hospitable and charming to all his guests, he never remembered them outside his house."

Shopland nodded.