Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/139

 "Anything but! She's always been a most considerate girl to me. That's why I'm afraid there's something wrong. I'm sure that if she'd had any idea of going away for the night she'd have told me. But she went away with this woman without saying a word—and that makes me feel certain that when she left the house it was with the intention of being back again very soon. I never knew her go out at any time before without telling me when"

At this junction the landlady was interrupted by a loud knock on her front door. She turned to the detective with a look of significant intelligence.

"That'll be the young man I mentioned," she murmured. "He said he'd come back about this time."

"Bring him in here," suggested Wedgwood. "Let me have a word with him."

The landlady went out and after a whispered conversation with her caller in the hall came back, ushering in a young man whom Wedgwood recognized at first glance as a person of character—probably of a somewhat odd and eccentric character. He was a thick-set, sturdily-built fellow, plain of feature, with a snub nose, and innumerable freckles, no beauty in any way, but possessed of a pair of singularly steady and honest eyes which he at once fixed