Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/192

182 knows I would do anything in reason to help you, Madame, to find your friend. But I beg of you not to ask me to go for you to the police!"

Sylvia was very much puzzled. Why should M. Polperro be so unwilling to seek the help of the law in so simple a matter as this?

"I will go myself," she said.

And just then—they were standing in the hall together—the Comte de Virieu came up.

"What is it you will do yourself, Madame?" he asked, smiling.

Sylvia turned to him eagerly.

"I feel that I should like to speak to the police about Anna Wolsky," she exclaimed. "It is the first thing one would do in England if a friend suddenly disappeared—in fact, the police are always looking for people who have gone away in a mysterious manner. You see, I can't help being afraid, Count Paul"—she lowered her voice—"that Anna has met with some dreadful accident. She hasn't a friend in Paris! Suppose she is lying now in some hospital, unable to make herself understood? I only wish that I had a photograph of Anna that I could take to them."

"Well, there is a possibility that this may be so. But remember it is even more probable that Madame Wolsky is quite well, and that she will be annoyed at your taking any such step to find her."

"Yes," said Sylvia, slowly. "I know that is quite possible. And yet—and yet it is so very unlike Anna not to send me a word of explanation! And then, you know in that letter she left in her room at the Pension