Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/102

 an hour before, rung me up from Scotland Yard, and requested me to go down there at once.

This I did without delay and, having been shown into that big, bare waiting-room, the same dark-haired inspector came to see me.

'Well, Mr. Munro,' he exclaimed, 'we've met with no very great result, though the description of the missing young lady has been circulated right through the country. But the affair is certainly a mystery.'

'Then you don't suspect that she has purposely disappeared—eh?' I asked quickly.

'Well—after all—I don't know,' was his hesitating reply. 'Something belonging to her has been found which rather leads to that supposition.'

'What has been found?' I gasped eagerly.

'This,' he answered, and he placed upon the table a gold chatelaine which I at once recognized as belonging to Roseye—for I had given it to her. It formed a jingling bunch. There was a chain-purse, a combined match-box and cigarette case, a powder-box with its little mirror in the cover, and a card-case all strung upon thin gold chains which, in turn, were attached to a ring—so that it could be carried upon the finger.

'Wherever was that found?' I asked, turning pale at sight of it.

'It was discovered this morning by a platelayer engaged in examining the rails in the long tunnel just beyond Welwyn Station on the Great Northern Railway.'

'In a tunnel!'

'Yes. The two tunnels which are quite near to