Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/44

 To-day was the 5th of October. Anthony had no intention of handing it over before the last moment. Truth to tell, he was by now feverishly anxious to read these Memoirs. He had meant to do so on the boat coming over, but had been laid low with a touch of fever, and not at all in the mood for deciphering crabbed and illegible handwriting, for none of the manuscript was typed. He was now more than ever determined to see what all the fuss was about.

There was the other job too.

On an impulse, he picked up the telephone book and looked up the name of Revel. There were six Revels in the book: Edward Henry Revel, surgeon, of Harley Street; James Revel & Co., saddlers; Lennox Revel of Abbotbury Mansions, Hampstead; Miss Mary Revel with an address in Ealing; Hon. Mrs. Timothy Revel of 487, Pont Street; and Mrs. Willis Revel of 42, Cadogan Square. Eliminating the saddlers and Miss Mary Revel, that gave him four names to investigate—and there was no reason to suppose that the lady lived in London at all! He shut up the book with a short shake of the head.

“For the moment I’ll leave it to chance,” he said. “Something usually turns up.”

The luck of the Anthony Cades of this world is perhaps in some measure due to their own belief in it. Anthony found what he was after not half an hour later, when he was turning over the pages of an illustrated paper. It was a representation of some tableau organized by the Duchess of Perth. Below the central figure, a woman in Eastern dress, was the inscription:

“The Hon. Mrs. Timothy Revel as Cleopatra. Before her marriage, Mrs. Revel was the Hon. Virginia Cawthron, a daughter of Lord Edgbaston.”

Anthony looked at the picture some time, slowly pursing up his lips, as though to whistle. Then he tore out the whole page, folded it up and put it in his pocket. He went upstairs again, unlocked his suit-case and took out the packet of letters. He took out the folded page from his pocket and slipped it under the string that held them together.

Then, at a sudden sound behind him, he wheeled round sharply. A man was standing in the doorway, the kind of man whom Anthony had fondly imagined existed only in the chorus of a Comic Opera. A sinister-looking figure, with a squat brutal head and lips drawn back in an evil grin.