“Indeed?” he said, coldly. “I should prefer to have this information from Miss Purdue’s own lips.”
“She won’t see you. But, anticipating this attitude on your part, I brought a letter from her. You recognize the writing?”
Wilfred took the letter. Certainly, the hand was Angela’s, and the meaning of the words he read unmistakable. Nevertheless, as he handed the missive back, there was a hard smile on his face.
“There is such a thing as writing a letter under compulsion,” he said.
The baronet’s pink face turned mauve.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“What I say.”
“Are you insinuating—”
“Yes, I am.”
“Pooh, sir!”
“Pooh to you!” said Wilfred. “And, if you want to know what I think, you poor fish, I believe your name is spelled with a capital F, like anybody else’s.”
Stung to the quick, the baronet turned on his heel and left the room without another word.
Although he had given up his life to chemical research, Wilfred Mulliner was no mere dreamer. He could be the man of action when necessity demanded. Scarcely had his visitor left when he was on his way to the Senior Test-Tubes, the famous chemists’ club in St. James’s. There, consulting Kelly’s County Families, he learnt that Sir Jasper’s address was ffinch Hall in Yorkshire. He had found out all he wanted to know. It was at ffinch Hall, he decided, that Angela must now be immured.
For that she was being immured somewhere he had no doubt. That letter, he was positive, has been written by her under stress of threats. The writing was Angela’s, but he declined to believe that she was responsible for the phraseology and sentiment. He remembered reading a story where the heroine was forced into courses which she would not otherwise have contemplated by the fact that somebody was standing over her with a flask of vitriol. Possibly this was what that bounder of a baronet had done to Angela.
Considering this possibility, he did not blame her for what she had said about him, Wilfred, in the second paragraph of her note. Nor did he reproach her for signing herself “Yrs truly, A. Purdue.” Naturally, when baronets are threatening to pour vitriol down her neck, a refined and sensitive young girl cannot pick her words. This sort of thing must of necessity interfere with the selection of the mot juste.
That afternoon, Wilfred was in a train on his way to Yorkshire. That evening, he was in the ffinch Arms in the village of which Sir Jasper was the squire. That night, he was in the gardens of ffinch Hall, prowling softly round the house, listening.
And presently, as he prowled, there came to his ears from an upper window a sound that made him stiffen like a statue and clench his hands till the knuckles stood out white under the strain.
It was the sound of a woman sobbing.
Wilfred spent a sleepless night, but by morning he had formed his plan of action. I will not weary you with a description of the slow and tedious steps by which he first made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper’s valet, who was an habitué of the village inn, and then by careful stages won the man’s confidence with friendly words and beer. Suffice it to say that, about a week later, Wilfred had induced this man with bribes to leave suddenly on the plea of an aunt’s illness, supplying—so as to cause his employer no inconvenience—a cousin to take his place.
This cousin, as you will have guessed, was Wilfred himself. But a very different Wilfred from the dark-haired, clean-cut young scientist who had revolutionized the world of chemistry a few months before by proving that H2O + b3g4z7 − m9z8 = g6f5p3x. Before leaving London on what he knew would be a dark and dangerous enterprise, Wilfred had taken the precaution of calling in at a well-known costumier’s and buying a red wig. He had also purchased a pair of blue spectacles: but for the role which he had now undertaken these were, of course, useless. A blue-spectacled valet could not but have aroused suspicion in the most guileless baronet. All that Wilfred did, therefore, in the way of preparation, was to don the wig, shave off his moustache, and treat his face to a light coating of the Raven Gipsy Face-Cream. This done, he set out for ffinch Hall.
Externally, ffinch Hall was one of those gloomy, sombre country-houses which seem to exist only for the purpose of having horrid crimes committed in them. Even in his brief visit to the grounds, Wilfred had noticed fully half a dozen places which seemed incomplete without a cross indicating spot where body was found by the police. It was the sort of house where ravens croak in the front garden just before the death of the heir, and shrieks ring out from behind barred windows in the night.
Nor was its interior more cheerful. And, as for the personnel of the domestic staff, that was less exhilarating than anything else about the place. It consisted of an aged cook who, as she bent over her cauldrons, looked like something out of a travelling company of Macbeth, touring the smaller towns of the North, and Murgatroyd, the butler, a huge, sinister man with a cast in one eye and an evil light in the other.
Many men, under these conditions, would have been daunted. But not Wilfred Mulliner. Apart from the fact that, like all the Mulliners, he was as brave as a lion, he had come expecting something of this nature. He settled down to his duties and kept his eyes open, and before long his vigilance was
