At present we are absurdly ignorant as to the man’s affairs.”
She turned away from him to the clerk, and pointed to another door.
“Can I go out without seeing those others?” she asked. “I really have nothing to say to them, and this has been quite a shock to me.”
“By all means, madam,” the clerk answered. “If you will allow me, I will escort you to the entrance.”
Two of the more enterprising of the journalists caught them up upon the pavement. Miss Penelope Morse, however, had little to say to them.
“You must not ask me any more questions about Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” she declared. “My acquaintance with him was of the slightest. It is true that I came here to lunch today without knowing what had happened. It has been a shock to me, and I do not wish to talk about it, and I will not talk about it, for the present.”
She was deaf to their further questions. The hotel clerk handed her into a taximeter cab, and gave the address to the driver. Then he went back to his office, where Inspector Jacks was still sitting.
“This Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” he remarked, “seems to have been what you might call a secretive sort of person. Nobody appears to know anything about him. I remember when he was staying here before that he had no callers, and seemed to spend most of his time sitting in the palm court.”
The inspector nodded.
“He was certainly a man who knew how to keep his own counsel,” he admitted. “Most Americans are ready enough to talk about themselves and their affairs, even to comparative strangers.”
The hotel clerk nodded.
“Makes it difficult for you,” he remarked.
“It makes the case very interesting,” the inspector declared, “especially when we find him engaged to lunch with a young lady of such remarkable discretion as Miss Penelope Morse.”
“You know her?” the clerk asked a little eagerly.
The inspector was engaged, apparently, in studying the pattern of the carpet.
“Not exactly,” he answered. “No, I have no absolute knowledge of Miss Penelope Morse. By the bye, that was rather an interesting address that she gave.”
“Devenham House,” the hotel clerk remarked. “Do you know who lives there?”
The inspector nodded.
“The Duke of Devenham,” he answered. “A very interesting young lady, I should think, that. I wonder what she and Mr. Hamilton Fynes would have talked about if they had lunched here today.”
The hotel clerk looked dubious. He did not grasp the significance of the question.
CHAPTER V. AN AFFAIR OF STATE
Miss Penelope Morse was perfectly well aware that the taxicab in which she left the Carlton Hotel was closely followed by two others. Through the tube which she found by her side, she altered her first instructions to the driver, and told him to proceed as fast as possible to Harrod’s Stores. Then, raising the flap at the rear of the cab, she watched the progress of the chase. Along Pall Mall the taxi in which she was seated gained considerably, but in the Park and along the Bird Cage Walk both the other taxies, risking the police regulations, drew almost alongside. Once past Hyde Park Corner, however, her cab again drew ahead, and when she was deposited in front of Harrod’s Stores, her pursuers were out of sight. She paid the driver quickly, a little over double his fare.
“If any one asks you questions,” she said, “say that you had instructions to wait here for me. Go on to the rank for a quarter of an hour. Then you can drive away.”
“You won’t be coming back, then, miss?” the man asked.
“I shall not,” she answered, “but I want those men who are following me to think that I am. They may as well lose a little time for their rudeness.”
The chauffeur touched his hat and obeyed his instructions. Miss Penelope Morse plunged into the mazes of the Stores with the air of one to whom the place is familiar. She did not pause, however, at any of the counters. In something less than two minutes she had left it again by a back entrance, stepped into another taxicab which was just setting down a passenger, and was well on her way back towards Pall Mall. Her ruse appeared to have been perfectly successful. At any rate, she saw nothing more of the occupants of the two taxicabs.
She stopped in front of one of the big clubs and, scribbling a line on her card, gave it to the door keeper.
“Will you find out if this gentleman is in?” she said. “If he is, will you kindly ask him to step out and speak to me?”
She returned to the cab and waited. In less than five minutes a tall, broad-shouldered young man, clean-shaven, and moving like an athlete, came briskly down the steps. He carried a soft hat in his hand, and directly he spoke his transatlantic origin was apparent.
“Penelope!” he exclaimed. “Why, what on earth—”
“My dear Dicky,” she interrupted, laughing at his expression, “you need not look so displeased with me. Of course, I know that I ought not to have come and sent a message into your club. I will admit at once that it was very forward of me. Perhaps when I have told you why I did so, you won’t look so shocked.”
“I’m glad to see you, anyway,” he declared. “There’s no bad news, I hope?”
“Nothing that concerns us particularly,” she answered. “I simply want to have a little talk with you. Come in here with me, please, at once. We can ride for a short distance anywhere.”
“But I am just in the middle of a rubber of bridge,” he objected.
“It can’t be helped,” she declared. “To tell you the truth, the matter I want to talk to you about is of more importance than any game of cards. Don’t be foolish, Dicky. You have your hat in your hand. Step in here by my side at once.”
He looked a little bewildered, but he obeyed her, as most people did when she was in earnest. She gave the driver an address somewhere in the city. As soon as they were off, she turned towards him.
“Dicky,” she said, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Well, I can’t say that I do regularly,” he answered. “I read the New York Herald, but these London journals are a bit difficult, aren’t they? One has to dig the news out—sort of treasure-hunt all the time.”
“You have read this murder case, at any rate,” she asked, “about the man who was killed in a special train between Liverpool and London?”
“Of course,” he answered, with a sudden awakening of interest. “What about it?”
“A good deal,” she answered slowly. “In the first place, the man who was murdered—Mr. Hamilton Fynes—comes
