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Page 33
The girl paused a moment, then she went on
"I suppose things had gone so for about a fortnight when your
sister, Lady Monteith, wrote that she had seen Sir Henry with us
- Mr. Meadows and me - in the motor. I have to shatter a
pleasant fancy about that chaperonage! That was the only time
Sir Henry was ever with us.
"It came about like this: It was Thursday morning about nine
o'clock, I think, when Sir Henry, popped in at the Ritz. He was
full of some amazing mystery that had turned up at Benton Court,
a country house belonging to the Duke of Dorset, up the Thames
beyond Richmond. He wanted to go there at once. He was fuming
because an under secretary had his motor, and he couldn't catch
up with him.
"I told him he could have `our' motor. He laughed. And I
telephoned Mr. Meadows to come over and take him up. Sir Henry
asked me to go along. So that's how Lady Monteith happened to
see the three of us crowded into the seat of the big roadster."
The girl went on in her deliberate, even voice
"Sir Henry was boiling full of the mystery. He got us all
excited by the time we arrived at Benton Court. I think Mr.
Meadows was as keen about the thing as Sir Henry. They were both
immensely worked up. It was an amazing thing!"
"You see, Benton Court is a little house of the Georgian period.
It has been closed up for ages, and now, all at once, the most
mysterious things began to happen in it.
"A local inspector, a very reliable man named Millson, passing
that way on his bicycle, saw a man lying on the doorstep. He
also saw some one running away. It was early in the morning,
just before daybreak.
"Millson saw only the man's back, but he could distinguish the
color of his clothes. He was wearing a blue coat and
reddish-brown trousers. Millson said he could hardly make out
the blue coat in the darkness, but he could distinctly see the
reddish brown color of the man's trousers. He was very positive
about this. Mr. Meadows and Sir Henry pressed him pretty hard,
but he was firm about it. He could make out that the coat was
blue, and he could see very distinctly that the trousers were
reddish-brown.
"But the extraordinary thing came a little later. Millson
hurried to a telephone to get Scotland Yard, then he returned to
Benton Court; but when he got back the dead man had disappeared.
"He insists that he was not away beyond five minutes, but within
that time the dead man had vanished. Millson could find no trace
of him. That's the mystery that sent us tearing up there with
Mr. Meadows and Sir Henry transformed into eager sleuths.
"We found the approaches to the house under a patrol from
Scotland Yard. But nobody had gone in. The inspector was
waiting for Sir Henry."
The old man stood like an image, and the aged woman sat in her
chair like a figure in basalt.
But the girl ran on with a sort of eager unconcern: "Sir Henry
and Mr. Meadows took the whole thing in charge. The door had
been broken open. They examined the marks about the fractures
very carefully; then they went inside. There were some naked
footprints. They were small, as of a little, cramped foot, and
they seemed to be tracked in blood on the hard oak floor. There
was a wax candle partly burned on the table. And that's all
there was.
"There were some tracks in the dust of the floor, but they were
not very clearly outlined, and Sir Henry thought nothing could be
made of them.
"It was awfully exciting. I went about behind the two men. Sir
Henry talked all the time. Mr. Meadows was quite as much
interested, but he didn't say anything. He seemed to say less as
the thing went on.
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