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Page 17
"The first of August," repeated the colonel. "That is to-morrow.
Now--if you'll be so kind--just what happened last night?"
Again I ran over the events of that tragic evening--the quarrel;
the heavy figure in the hall; the escape by way of the seldom-used
gate.
"My boy," said Colonel Hughes as he rose to go, "the threads of this
tragedy stretch far--some of them to India; some to a country I
will not name. I may say frankly that I have other and greater
interest in the matter than that of the captain's friend. For the
present that is in strict confidence between us; the police are
well-meaning, but they sometimes blunder. Did I understand you to
say that you have copies of the Mail containing those odd messages?"
"Right here in my desk," said I. I got them for him.
"I think I shall take them--if I may," he said. "You will, of
course, not mention this little visit of mine. We shall meet again.
Good morning."
And he went away, carrying those papers with their strange signals
to Rangoon.
Somehow I feel wonderfully cheered by his call. For the first time
since seven last evening I begin to breathe freely again.
And so, lady who likes mystery, the matter stands on the afternoon
of the last day of July, nineteen hundred and fourteen.
I shall mail you this letter to-night. It is my third to you, and
it carries with it three times the dreams that went with the first;
for they are dreams that live not only at night, when the moon is
on the courtyard, but also in the bright light of day.
Yes--I am remarkably cheered. I realize that I have not eaten at
all--save a cup of coffee from the trembling hand of Walters
--since last night, at Simpson's. I am going now to dine. I shall
begin with grapefruit. I realize that I am suddenly very fond of
grapefruit.
How bromidic to note it--we have many tastes in common!
EX-STRAWBERRY MAN.
The third letter from her correspondent of the Agony Column
increased in the mind of the lovely young woman at the Carlton the
excitement and tension the second had created. For a long time, on
the Saturday morning of its receipt, she sat in her room puzzling
over the mystery of the house in Adelphi Terrace. When first she
had heard that Captain Fraser-Freer, of the Indian Army, was dead
of a knife wound over the heart, the news had shocked her like that
of the loss of some old and dear friend. She had desired
passionately the apprehension of his murderer, and had turned over
and over in her mind the possibilities of white asters, a scarab
pin and a Homburg hat.
Perhaps the girl longed for the arrest of the guilty man thus keenly
because this jaunty young friend of hers--a friend whose name she
did not know--to whom, indeed, she had never spoken--was so
dangerously entangled in the affair. For from what she knew of
Geoffrey West, from her casual glance in the restaurant and, far
more, from his letters, she liked him extremely.
And now came his third letter, in which he related the connection
of that hat, that pin and those asters with the column in the Mail
which had first brought them together. As it happened, she, too,
had copies of the paper for the first four days of the week. She
went to her sitting-room, unearthed these copies, and--gasped!
For from the column in Monday's paper stared up at her the cryptic
words to Rangoon concerning asters in a garden at Canterbury. In
the other three issues as well, she found the identical messages
her strawberry man had quoted. She sat for a moment in deep thought;
sat, in fact, until at her door came the enraged knocking of a
hungry parent who had been waiting a full hour in the lobby below
for her to join him at breakfast.
"Come, come!" boomed her father, entering at her invitation. "Don't
sit here all day mooning. I'm hungry if you're not."
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