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Updated: May 26, 2025
It was suggested at the Préfecture to-day that it would be well to make a perquisition, not only in Mrs. Pargeter's own house, but also in the houses of some of her intimates. Mr. Pargeter, as you know, gave the police every possible facility. Nothing was found in the Villa Pargeter which could throw any light on Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance.
At last, when close to Vanderlyn, he spoke in a low, gruff whisper. "Grid!" he exclaimed, "Grid, old man, don't be shocked! La d'Elphis says that Peggy's dead that she's been dead three days!" Vanderlyn could not speak. He stared dumbly at the other, and as he realised the relief, almost the joy, in Pargeter's voice, there came over him a horrible impulse to strike and then to flee.
They waited, it seemed a long, long time, but as a matter of fact it was but a very few minutes after Pargeter's abrupt entrance and exit, when his short quick steps were heard resounding down the long suite of reception-rooms.
"The French are a wonderful people," he said rather crossly, "everybody says that Florac is ruined, that he's living on ten francs a day allowed him by a kind grandmother and yet since I have been standing here he's dropped, at least so I've calculated, not far short of four hundred pounds!" A grin came over Pargeter's small neat face, and lit up his odd, different-coloured eyes.
That second day, of which the closing hours were destined to bring to Laurence Vanderlyn the most dramatic and dangerous moments connected with the whole tragic episode of Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance, wore itself slowly, uneventfully away.
During the four days which had elapsed between then and now, days of agitation, of excitement, and of suspense, he had more than once asked himself whether it were possible that certain things which all the world had long known concerning Tom Pargeter had only just become revealed to Tom Pargeter's wife.
Pargeter's relations had arrived from England one of her many brothers, and a woman cousin who was fond of her. They, of course, were spending the evening with Pargeter, and so the American had a respite till to-morrow. Having eaten his solitary dinner with a zest of which he felt ashamed, he was now in his study leaning back in an easy-chair, with a pile of unread papers at his side.
"No," said Vanderlyn, dully, "she has not done that." He took her to her door, and then, as he had promised Tom Pargeter to do, went to the Avenue du Bois, there to spend with Margaret Pargeter's husband another term of weary waiting and suspense.
During the long course of the meal, Vanderlyn listened silently to Pargeter's conjectures concerning Peggy's disappearance conjectures broken by lamentations over the contretemps which had made it impossible for him to leave Paris that day.
There need be no difficulty even as to the words she should use to reveal the truth; Vanderlyn had cut out from the Petit Journal the paragraph which told of the strange discovery made three nights before at Orange. He would inform her that Mr. Pargeter's friends, having assured themselves that the unknown woman in question was Mrs.
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