Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/174

160 together the other day, and that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe all you 'ear, you know."

"Did they often quarrel?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable persons for foreigners."

I re-passed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand where I had put up, tired and disappointed.

Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well everything was kept.

To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said —

"I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents lived in Durham."

"I remember her perfectly," was the woman's response as she sat behind the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter to put to school.

"Well," I said, "there has been some little friction in the family, and I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it — an aunt who desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts."

"Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that.