and what do you think my man wanted? To put me into the Eddystone Mansions flat for six months at his expense, on the condition that I or Jenny would devote some time every day to searching for papers among the furniture. He said that a chum of his had once occupied the flat, and had left in it one or more documents, carefully hidden somewhere, which were of the utmost importance; I was to search for these, and give them to him. Well, I didn’t half like it, for I thought he was wicked. So I asked him why he didn’t take the flat, and search for the papers himself at his leisure? Well, he made some excuse or other, and at last, as he talked sanely enough, I struck hands over it – rent free, six months, an hour’s search each day; and Jenny and I moved in.”
“Did you search an hour each day?” asked David with a laugh.
“Hardly likely!” grinned Miss Ermyn L’Estrange. “I can see myself searching a small flat day after day for I didn’t know what, like a goose. There was nowhere to search. I did look about a little the first day; but, not finding any documents, I thought to myself, ‘Here endeth.’ Of course, I had to tell him that I was busy searching, for that man pestered me so, you wouldn’t believe. He never actually came to the flat, for some reason or other; but night after night, when the theaters opened in September, there he was, wanting to know if I had found anything, if I had probed the cushions with hat-pins, if I had looked under the carpets, and the rest of it. At last I began to treat him a bit off-handedly, I admit, and before the third month was up, he says to me one night that if I didn’t find something at once, he would have to cut off the allowance for the rent. I told him that he had put me there for six months, that I had made all arrangements, and that he was an idiot. If he didn’t know his mind, I knew mine. Oh, we had a fine set-to, I can tell you. He said that, since I had proved useless to him, I should have to pay my own rent, so, what with ghosts and all, I wouldn’t stay in the place another two days; and in going I gave it hot to that Mr. Dibbin, too – ”
“What had Dibbin done?” asked David.
“He hadn’t done anything; but still I gave him a piece of my mind, for I was wild.”
“Poor Dibbin! he is still shaky from it. He has mentioned to me that you went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel. But you never found any papers at all in the flat?”
“No – except one, or rather two, and those Strauss never got.”
“How was that?”
“Because I didn’t find them till the day after we had had the row, when my trunks were ready packed to go, and I wasn’t going to give them to him then, for his cheek. Besides, they didn’t concern him; they were only a marriage certificate, and the certificate of a birth which fell out of a picture.”
David sat up, saying: “How do you mean, ‘fell out of a picture’?”
“As we were carrying out the trunks, there was a bump, and one of the pictures in the corridor came down. The boards at the back of it must have been loose, for they fell out, and among them was an envelope with the two certificates in it.”
“Now, I bless my stars that ever I came to you,” said David. “This may be the very thing I want.”
“How many of you are after papers in that flat, I should like to know. First there was Strauss, then that young lady, and now you – ”
“Which young lady?” asked David.
“Why, I hadn’t been in the flat three days when a young lady, a tall, dark girl came, and practically insulted me. She wanted to know what was my motive for coming into the flat, and if I was the agent of any one, and if I meant to purloin any papers which I might find. Well, I’m not one for taking much sauce from another woman; for I’ve got red hair, as you can see for yourself, but somehow I couldn’t be hard on her, she had had some big trouble, I could tell – a bit touched somewhere, too, I thought, suspicious as a bird, sick at the very name of Strauss! She had dropped to it all right that I was there to serve Strauss’s ends, and she went on her bended knees to me, asking me not to do it. I couldn’t quite make out what it was all about, or what there was between her and Strauss, for she wouldn’t tell me. It was something pretty strong, for when I told Strauss about her visit, I thought the man was going to drop dead. Her name was Violet Mordaunt. I remember it; for Mordaunt was also the family name of the woman in the marriage certificate – ”
“Why did you not send this marriage certificate to Violet Mordaunt?” asked David, “since you did not give it to Strauss?”
“I would have sent it to her, I’m sure, but I didn’t have her address. She did leave me an address that day she came; but, to tell the truth, I didn’t take the whole to-do about papers, papers, papers, seriously, and Lord knows what became of the address – ”
“Oh, good heavens, how selfish and careless!” groaned David.
“Look here, young man, you come from Australia?” cried Miss L’Estrange, bouncing up from her chair. “In London people look after themselves and mind their own business, you see. We are as kind-hearted here as they are anywhere else, but we haven’t the same leisure to be kind. I tell you that if I had had the young lady’s address I should very likely have sent her the papers; but I didn’t, and that’s all; so don’t preach.”
“Well, better late than never,” said David. “Just give me the papers now, if you will, for I know her address – ”
“But where are the papers?” said Miss L’Estrange. “You don’t suppose that I keep papers – ”
“Don’t say that you have lost them!” pleaded David.
“I haven’t the faintest idea where the papers are! I was in a regular flurry, just moving out of the place; I had no interest in the papers. I glanced at them to see what they were, and, as far as I can remember, I threw them on the floor, or handed them to Jenny. It’s just possible that they are here now; but I shouldn’t fancy so. I’ll ask Jenny when she comes in.”
“Ah, you little know how much misery you might have saved a poor girl, if you had been a little more thoughtful,” growled David, and his wrath seemed to cow the woman somewhat. “This name of Mordaunt was the maiden name of your predecessor in the flat, who took the name of Gwendoline Barnes; Violet Mordaunt is her sister; Gwendoline is believed by all the world, including her own mother, to have been led astray, and the certificates which you handled so lightly would have cleared her name and lifted a world of grief from her poor sister’s heart.”
“Good Lord! How was I to know all that?” shrilled Miss L’Estrange, staring. “So it was Strauss that ruined Gwen Barnes? And this Violet Mordaunt was Gwen Barnes’s sister? Now you say it, they were something alike. I always put down that Strauss for a rotter – ”
“But why, since he married her?”
“Married whom? Strauss wasn’t the husband’s name on the marriage-certificate! Gwendoline Mordaunt was one, and the other, as far as I can recollect, was a foreign name, von Somebody or other – ”
“Von!” David also sprang to his feet. “Are you sure? or might it have been ‘van’? Oh, try now to remember! One is German, the other Dutch!”
“It might have been ‘van,’ or it might have been ‘von’ – you can’t expect one to remember after all these names. But I remember the woman’s name, Gwendoline Mordaunt, quite well, because the Gwendoline reminded me of Gwen Barnes, and the Mordaunt reminded me of Miss Violet Mordaunt; and the husband’s name, I know, was von or van Something, and so was the name of the child – a boy it was – I think its name was Henry – ”
“Hupfeldt?”
