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Doctor Gant, Jocelyn Thew, a young woman called Nora Sharey, and Miss Beverley are the four people possibly implicated in their disappearance, although of these two I consider Miss Sharey and Miss Beverley out of the question. Nevertheless, their rooms and every scrap of property they possess have been searched thoroughly, and their movements since they arrived in London are absolutely tabulated.
Captain Richard Beverley, on his way through the hotel smoking room to the Savoy bar, stopped short. He looked at the girl who had half risen from her seat on the couch with a sudden impulse of half startled recognition. Her little smile of welcome was entirely convincing. "Why, it's Nora Sharey!" he exclaimed. "Nora!" "Well, I am glad you've recognised me at last," she said, laughing.
"I tried to make you see me last night in the restaurant, but you wouldn't look." He seemed a little dazed, even after he had saluted mechanically, held her hand for a moment and sank into the place by her side. "Nora Sharey!" he repeated. "Why, it was really you, then, dining last night with that fellow Crawshay?"
"The thrill of fear is in my veins. One more word, though. Miss Nora Sharey is an old friend of mine. There is a tie between us at which you could not guess. Lavish your attentions on her in the hope of hearing something which will prove to your advantage, but do not trifle with her affections. If you do, I shall constitute myself her guardian and there will be trouble, Crawshay trouble."
He crossed the room at a slow saunter, as though on his way to the bar, and paused before the girl's chair. She laid down her book and looked up at him. Her smile at once assured him of a welcome. "I am glad that I am not altogether forgotten, Miss Sharey," he said, holding out his hand which she promptly accepted. "I suppose it still is Miss Sharey, is it? I hope so."
Crawshay," she said, "you seem to me to be wasting a lot of time worrying round a subject, when I don't know whether a straightforward question wouldn't clear it up for you. If you want to know what there is between those three, Jocelyn Thew and the two Beverleys, I don't know that I mind telling you. It's probably what you asked me to dine with you for, anyway." "My dear Miss Sharey!"
Look at them all around us, Crawshay in the corner, trying his best to get something incriminating out of Nora Sharey; Brightman smoking a cigar out there, with his eyes wandering all the time through the glass screen towards this table; and the young man who seemed to haunt your hotel, Miss Beverley Henshaw I believe his name is you see him dining there with his back turned ostentatiously towards us and a little pocket mirror by his side.
'Say, boys, you'll begin, 'I'm on to a good thing! Everything's looking lovely. I'm taking little Nora Sharey, of Fourteenth Street, out to dine girl who came over to Europe after Jocelyn Thew, you know. Good business, eh?" Crawshay laughed tolerantly. The girl's humour pleased him. "You are wrong," he declared. "If I told them that, they'd expect something from me which I know I shan't get.
"Not unless it serves his purpose. It is astonishing," Crawshay went on reflectively, "how the science of detection has changed during the last ten years. When I was an apprentice at it and though you may not think it. Miss Sharey, I am a professional, not an amateur, although I am generally employed on Government business secrecy was our watchword.
I may be or I may not, but that doesn't make me any the more likely to come in on your side of the game." Mr. Crawshay's gesture was entirely convincing. "My dear Miss Sharey," he said softly, "I am going to take a holiday. Business is one thing and pleasure is another. For this evening I am going to put business out of my mind.
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