'No.'
'After he had gone, what did Polly do?'
'Sat and cried for about half an hour, then Sidney came for her.'
'Sidney?'
'Her boy—the latest one.'
'Describe Sidney.'
'A dark fellow, foreign.'
'French—German?'
'No. A sort of Indian, like.'
'Indian?' snapped Wessex. 'What do you mean by Indian?'
'Very dark,' replied the woman without emotion, swinging a baby she held to and fro in a methodical way which the detective found highly irritating.
'You mean a native of India?'
'Yes, I should think so. I never noticed him much. Polly has so many.'
'How long has she known this man?'
'Only a month or so, but she is crazy about him.'
'And when he came last night she went away with him?'
'Yes. She was all ready to go before the other gentleman called. He must have told her something which made her think it was all off, and she was crazy with joy when Sidney turned up. She had all her things packed, and off she went.'
Experience had taught Detective Inspector Wessex to recognize the truth when he met it, and he did not doubt the statement of the woman with the baby. 'Can you give me any idea where this man Sidney came from?' he asked.
'I am afraid I can't,' replied the listless voice. 'He was in the service of some gentleman in the country; that's all I know about him.'
'Did Polly leave no address to which letters were to be forwarded?'
'No; she said she would write.'
'One other point,' said Wessex, and he looked hard into the woman's face: 'What do you know about Fire- Tongue?'
He was answered by a stare of blank stupidity.
'You heard me?'
'Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you are talking about.'
Quick decisions are required from every member of the Criminal Investigation Department, and Detective Inspector Wessex came to one now.
'That will do for the present,' he said, turned, and ran down the steps to the waiting cab.
Chapter 15 NAIDA
Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering glimpses of women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirted cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. The workaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of London had commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasure seekers, but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing his tightly-buttoned dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him, staring out of the window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at noon. Only one who knew him very well could have detected the fact that anxiety was written upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to be directed, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward, upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knocking at the door.
'In,' said Nicol Brinn.
Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. 'A lady to see you, sir.'
Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamic force beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of his gaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, of tremendous enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature of stone again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled over in the club lands of the world.
'Name?'
'She gave none.'
'English?'
'No, sir, a foreign lady.'
'In.'
Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinn did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London, Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. He raised his clenched hands. 'Please God she has come,' he whispered. 'Dare I believe it? Dare I believe it?'
The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside, announced: 'The lady to see you, sir.'
He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the room. She wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up about her face. Three steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins withdrew and closed the door.
At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfigured features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and, raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry of greeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness of the East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes were glorious wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known a hundred ages. Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple, possessing the poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in the Orient.
'Naida!' breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. 'Naida!'
His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his hands with a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.
Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him.
She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewels sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxury of the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinn seemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were on fire. Into the woman's face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.
'Oh, my big American sweetheart,' she whispered, and, approaching him with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. 'Do you still think I am beautiful?'
'Beautiful!'
No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly his arms were about her like bands of iron, and with a long, wondering sigh she lay back looking up into his face, while he gazed hungrily into her eyes. His lips had almost met hers when softly, almost inaudibly, she sighed: 'Nicol!'
She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and almost dropping the last letter entirely.
Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman of the East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that law which England's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking of a love so deep as to be sacred.
Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her to the settee between the two high windows and placed her there amid Oriental cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen. He knelt at her feet and, holding both her hands, looked into her face with that wondering expression in which there was something incredulous and something sorrowful; a look of great and selfless tenderness. The face of Naida was lighted up, and her big eyes filled with tears. Disengaging one of her jewelled hands, she ruffled Nicol Brinn's hair.
'My Nicol,' she said, tenderly. 'Have I changed so much?'
Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very musical. To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest music in the world.
'Naida,' he whispered. 'Naida. Even yet I dare not believe that you are here.'
'You knew I would come?'
