“She wouldn’t,” said Tab stoutly. “She’s the kind of girl who would hate the publicity of it and would do all she could to make sure there was not a simple explanation of their loss before she put the matter in the hands of the police.”
“You know her, eh?”
“I know her in the sense that a reporter knows almost everybody from the Secretary of State to the hangman,” said Tab, “but I’ll take this story if you like. There will be nothing doing on the Trasmere case before the evening. She stays at the Central, does she?”
The other nodded.
“You will need to exercise a little ingenuity,” he said, “especially if what you say about her hating publicity is true. I’d like to get a photograph of the actress who hated publicity and hang it up in this office,” he added.
At the Central Hotel, Tab found himself up against a blank wall.
“Miss Ardfern is not receiving callers,” said the enquiry clerk. He was not even certain that she was in.
“Will you send my card up?”
The clerk very emphatically said that he would not send up anybody’s card. Tab went straight to the supreme authority. Fortunately he knew the hotel manager very well, but on this occasion Crispi was not inclined to oblige him.
“Miss Ardfern is a very good customer of ours, Holland,” he said, “and we don’t want to offend her. I will tell you, in the strictest confidence, that Miss Ardfern is not in the hotel.”
“Where is she?”
“She went away this morning in her car to her country cottage. She always spends Sunday and Sunday night in the country and I know that she does not want to see any reporters, because she came back this morning especially to tell me that the staff were to answer no enquiries relative to herself.”
“Where is this country cottage—come on, Crispi,” wheedled Tab, “or the next time you have a robbery in this hotel I’ll make a front page item of it.”
“That is blackmail,” murmured Crispi, protestingly. “I am afraid I cannot tell you, Holland. Maybe if you got a Hertford directory—”
In the office library he found the directory and turned its pages. Against the name of “Ardfern Ursula” was “Stone Cottage, near Blisville Village.”
This distance from town was some forty-five miles and the route carried him past an unfinished building which one day was to play its part in the ending of many mysteries. Tab covered the ground on a fast motorcycle in just over an hour. He leant his machine against a very trim hedge, opened the high garden gate, and walked into the beautiful little garden that surrounded Stone Cottage, which was not ill-named, though the stone which composed its walls was completely hidden by purple flowering creeper.
In the shade of a tree he saw a white figure stretched at her ease, a figure which sat bolt upright in her deep garden chair at the click of the gate-lock.
“This is too bad of you, Mr. Tab,” said Ursula Ardfern, reproachfully. “I particularly asked Crispi not to tell anybody where I was.”
“Crispi didn’t tell. I found you in a directory,” said Tab cheerfully.
The sunlight was very kind to Ursula and it seemed to him that she looked even more beautiful in these surroundings than she had in the generous setting and the more merciful lighting of the theatre.
She was slimmer than he had thought, and conveyed an extraordinary impression of hurt youth. Somewhere, sometime, this girl had suffered, he thought, yet there was no hint of old pain in her unlined face, no suggestion of sorrow or remorse in her clear blue eyes.
“I suppose you have come to cross-examine me about my jewels,” she said, “and I will allow you, on one condition, to ask me any question you wish.”
“What is the condition?” he smiled.
“Bring up that chair.” She pointed across the strip of lawn. “Now sit down,” and when he had obeyed, “the condition is this: that you will confine yourself to saying that I have no recollection of the jewels being taken, but I shall be very glad to have them back and pay a suitable reward, that they were not as expensive as most people thought and that I am not insured against loss by theft.”
“All of which I will faithfully record,” said Tab. “I am an honest man and keep my promises. I admit it.”
“And now I will tell you, for your own private ear,” she said, “that if I never see those jewels again, I shall be a very happy woman.”
He looked at her open-mouthed.
“You don’t think I am posing, do you?” she looked round at him suspiciously. “I see that you don’t. I am not in the least worried that I shall have to play the part with property jewels as I did last night.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police before?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t,” was her unsatisfactory but uncompromising reply. “You may put whatever interpretation you like upon my slackness. You may say or think that it was because of my humanity, my desire to save some person from being accused, or coming under suspicion of having stolen the pieces, when all the time they were smug in my bureau drawer, or you may think or say that I did not want to make a fuss about them. In fact,” she smiled, “you can do or say what you wish.”
“You don’t remember who was standing by you—”
She stopped him with a gesture.
“I remember nothing except that I bought ten stamps.”
“What was the jewelry worth?” he persisted.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I can’t even tell you that,” she said.
“Had they any history?”
She laughed.
“You are very persistent, Mr. Tab.” Her eyes were smiling at him, though her face was composed. “And now, since you have surprised me in my Abode of Quiet, I must show you over my little domain.”
She took him round the garden and through the tiny pine-wood
