Inadequately fed and melancholy, Mr. Fortune was borne into Paddington by a quarter-past twelve. He there beheld Lomas sitting in Lomas’s car and regarding him with a satirical eye. Mr. Fortune entered the car in dignity and silence.
“My dear fellow, I hate to disappoint you,” Lomas smiled. “You’ve done wonderfully well. Arrested a chauffeur, driven a lady to suicide--admirable. It is really your masterpiece. Art for art’s sake in the grand style. You must find it horribly disappointing to act with a dull fellow like me.”
Lomas chuckled. “I know, I know. I can’t help seeing it. And really I hate to spoil your work. But the plain fact is I’ve got the body.”
“And unfortunately--I really do sympathize with you--it isn’t dead.”
“When did I say it was?” said Mr. Fortune. “I said you hadn’t a corpse for me--and you haven’t got one now. I said it was all muddled--and so it is, a dam’ muddle.”
“Don’t you want to know why the fair Sylvia left home?”
“She’s gone off with a man, my dear fellow,” Lomas laughed.
“Well, well,” said Reggie mildly. “And that’s why the Darcourt’s chauffeur had her cigarette-case in his pocket! And that’s why the Darcourt jumped into the river when we asked her to explain! You make it all so clear, Lomas.”
“Theft, I suppose, and fright.” Lomas shrugged. “But we’ll ask Sylvia.”
“I had information of some one like her from a little place in the wilds of Suffolk. I sent a fellow down and he has no doubt it’s the lady. She’s been living there since she vanished, with a man.”
“Not identified. Smith by name,” said Lomas curtly. “You’d better ask her yourself, Fortune.”
“Yes. There’s quite a lot of things I’d like to ask her,” said Reggie, and conversation languished. Even the elaborate lunch which Reggie insisted on eating in Colchester did not revive it, for Lomas was fretful at the delay. So at last, with Reggie somnolent and Lomas feverish, the car drew up at the ancient inn of the village of Baldon.
A young fellow who was drinking ginger-beer in the porch looked up and came to meet them. “She’s done a bunk, sir,” he said in a low voice. “She and her Mr. Smith went off half an hour ago. Some luggage in the car. Took the London road.”
“Damme, we must have passed them on the road,” Lomas cried. “Any idea why she went, Blakiston?”