Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/96

84 "Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Cregg?" laughed the handsome girl. "Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?"

"I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt," I answered with mock severity. "I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a flirt, could she?"

"No. I will give you your due," she declared. "You never do flirt. That is why I like you."

"Thanks for your candour. Miss Leithcourt," I said.

"Only," she added, "you seem smitten with Elma's charms."

"I think she's extremely pretty," I remarked, with the photograph still in my hand. "Do you ever see her now?"

"Never," she replied. "Since the day I left school we have never met. She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a doctor."

Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, obtained knowledge of the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.

What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the picture which