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By Root 403 0

whilst Lady Susan seemed quite satisfied by that telegram, I wasn’t. It struck me as odd that she should always telegraph, not write. A line or two in her own handwriting would have set all my fears at rest. But anyone can sign a telegram “Hermy.” The more I thought it over, the more uneasy I got. In the end I went down to Maldon. That was yesterday afternoon. It’s a fair-sized place–good links there and all that–two hotels. I inquired everywhere I could think of, but there wasn’t a sign that Hermy had ever been there. Coming back in the train I read your advertisement and I thought I’d put it up to you. If Hermy has really gone off to Monte Carlo, I don’t want to set the police on her track and make a scandal, but I’m not going to be sent off on a wild goose chase myself. I stay here in London, in case–in case there’s been foul play of any kind.’

Tommy nodded thoughtfully.

‘What do you suspect exactly?’

‘I don’t know. But I feel there’s something wrong.’

With a quick movement, Stavansson took a case from his pocket and laid it open before them.

‘That is Hermione,’ he said. ‘I will leave it with you.’

The photograph represented a tall, willowy woman, no longer in her first youth, but with a charming frank smile and lovely eyes.

‘Now, Mr Stavansson,’ said Tommy, ‘there is nothing you have omitted to tell me?’

‘Nothing whatever.’

‘No detail, however small?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Tommy sighed.

‘That makes the task harder,’ he observed. ‘You must often have noticed, Mr Stavansson, in reading of crime, how one small detail is all the great detective needs to set him on the track. I may say that this case presents some unusual features. I have, I think, partially solved it already, but time will show.’

He picked up a violin which lay on the table and drew the bow once or twice across the strings. Tuppence ground her teeth, and even the explorer blenched. The performer laid the instrument down again.

‘A few chords from Mosgovskensky,’ he murmured. ‘Leave me your address, Mr Stavansson, and I will report progress to you.’

As the visitor left the office, Tuppence grabbed the violin, and putting it in the cupboard turned the key in the lock.

‘If you must be Sherlock Holmes,’ she observed, ‘I’ll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled cocaine, but for God’s sake leave that violin alone. If that nice explorer man hadn’t been as simple as a child, he’d have seen through you. Are you going on with the Sherlock Holmes touch?’

‘I flatter myself that I have carried it through very well so far,’ said Tommy with some complacence. ‘The deductions were good, weren’t they? I had to risk the taxi. After all, it’s the only sensible way of getting to this place.’

‘It’s lucky I had just read the bit about his engagement in this morning’s Daily Mirror,’ remarked Tuppence.

‘Yes, that looked well for the efficiency of Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives. This is decidedly a Sherlock Holmes case. Even you cannot have failed to notice the similarity between it and the disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.’

‘Do you expect to find Mrs Leigh Gordon’s body in a coffin?’

‘Logically, history should repeat itself. Actually–well, what do you think?’

‘Well,’ said Tuppence. ‘The most obvious explanation seems to be that for some reason or other, Hermy, as he calls her, is afraid to meet her fiancé, and that Lady Susan is backing her up. In fact, to put it bluntly, she’s come a cropper of some kind, and has got the wind up about it.’

‘That occurred to me also,’ said Tommy. ‘But I thought we’d better make pretty certain before suggesting that explanation to a man like Stavansson. What about a run down to Maldon, old thing? And it would do no harm to take some golf clubs with us.’

Tuppence agreeing, the International Detective Agency was left in the charge of Albert.

Maldon, though a well-known residential place, did not cover a large area. Tommy and Tuppence, making every possible inquiry that ingenuity could suggest, nevertheless drew a complete blank. It was as they were returning to London that a brilliant idea occurred to Tuppence.