Why did both the woman Alford and Gabrielle Tennison deny all
knowledge of the man whom they had met with such precautions of
secrecy, and who, when afterwards he discovered that I was following
him, had so cleverly evaded me? The man Suzor was evidently implicated
in the plot, though I had never previously suspected it! Twice he had
travelled with me, meeting me as though by accident, yet I now saw
that he had been my companion with some set purpose in view.
What could it be?
It became quite plain that I could not hope to obtain anything further
from either Gabrielle or the servant, therefore I assumed a polite and
sympathetic attitude and told them that I hoped to call again on Mrs.
Tennison's return. Afterwards I left, feeling that at least I had
gained some knowledge, even though it served to bewilder me the more.
Later I called upon Sir Charles Wendover in Cavendish Square, whom I
found to be a quiet elderly man of severe professional aspect and
demeanour, a man whose photograph I had often seen in the newspapers,
for he was one of the best-known of mental specialists.
When I explained that the object of my visit was to learn something of
the case of my friend Miss Tennison, he asked me to sit down and then
switched on a green-shaded reading-lamp and referred to a big book
upon his writing table. His consulting room was dull and dark, with
heavy Victorian furniture and a great bookcase filled with medical
works. In the chair in which I sat persons of all classes had sat
while he had examined and observed them, and afterwards given his
opinion to their friends.
"Ah! yes," he exclaimed, when at last he found the notes he had made
upon the case. "I saw the young lady on the twenty-eighth of November.
A most peculiar case--most peculiar! Leicester and Franklyn both saw
her, but they were just as much puzzled as myself."
And through his big round horn spectacles he continued reading to
himself the several pages of notes.
"Yes," he remarked at last. "I now recall all the facts. A very
curious case. The young lady disappeared from her friends, and was
found some days later wandering near Petersfield, in Hampshire, in an
exhausted condition. She could not account for her disappearance, or
the state in which she was. Her memory had completely gone, and she
has not, I believe, yet recovered it."
"No, she has not," I said. "But the reason I have ventured to call,
Sir Charles, is to hear your opinion on the case."
"My opinion!" he echoed. "What opinion can I hold when the effect is
so plain--loss of memory?"
"Ah! But how could such a state of mind be produced?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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