"Does your name happen to be Mortimer, sir?" he asked. "Because if so,
this here telegram is for you."
"It is," said Lionel in some surprise. The wire could only be from
Beatrice, but he had not expected any communication from her as yet.
With a brief apology he opened the yellow envelope and read its
contents. It was all he could do to keep from betraying his
astonishment. The wire read as follows:--
"Hope you had pleasant journey. My suspicions deepen. Try stay
Arkwright twin. Suspect even her. Wait further wire.--BLAIR."
He read the telegram three times, but it was not till the third reading
that he grasped the import of "Arkwright twin." He knew no one of the
name of Arkwright, nor had he ever claimed acquaintance with a twin.
"The nearest I could do is triplets," he thought. "Johnson of the House
was a triplet, I remember, but that's no good to me.... Who on
earth...?" And then he recalled Beatrice saying that she had a twin
sister who had disapproved of her stage career. Of course it must be
she. He had been so accustomed to think of his preceptress as Beatrice
Blair that he had almost forgotten it must be a stage name. And so she
was really an Arkwright--rather a pretty name on the whole, though
unworthy of her high claims; failing Beatrice Blair, it ought to have
been Rosalind ... Rosalind what? Rosalind Roy ... Rosalind Gay ...
Rosalind Ebbsfleet ... Rosalind Wise.... He smiled as his thoughts
played with a score of dainty conceits. He was roused to common sense
and depression by the remembrance that she was really Mrs. Lukos. But
was Lukos a surname? "Let's hope not," he reflected sourly.
"No bad news, I trust," said the chubby clergyman, with a polite but
ecclesiastical inflection.
"No--no," answered Lionel abruptly. He abandoned Rosalind completely and
tried to arrange his thoughts. "By the way, do you happen to know any
one of the name of Arkwright in the neighborhood?"
The chubby clergyman looked interested.
"I do and I don't," he said, pulling his chair close to the table and
leaning on his elbows. "A Miss Arkwright lives at The Quiet House. She
has been the tenant for only two months, and nobody has seen her yet."
"What!"
"It sounds odd," said the clergyman with the smile of one who has an
interesting story for a virgin audience, "but it is true. She calls on
nobody, and denies herself to every caller. She is never seen in the
village except when driving in her motor, and I am sorry to say that she
does not come to church."
"But surely something is known of her,--through the servants, for
instance----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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