"Is your name Herbert, may I ask?"

At that moment, he blessed Smeaton for the lie which he had made him a present of at starting. He proceeded to retail it for the young woman's benefit.

She smiled a sour smile, and he felt his face flush. Decidedly he wanted more experience.

"Nothing doing this time," she said insolently, in a rasping c.o.c.kney voice. "You'd better hurry up next time. The real owner of the telegram took it away half-an-hour ago!"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE MYSTERIOUS MRS SAXTON.

After Wingate's hurried departure, Smeaton put Sheila into a taxi, and quickly took his way back to Scotland Yard. Here he found a note awaiting him from the Home Secretary, requesting him to step round to the Home Office.

They knew each other well, these two men, and had been brought together several times on affairs of public importance. Before he had thrown all his energies into politics Mr Carlingford had been one of the most successful barristers of the day. His intellect was of the keen and subtle order.

He was, of course, profoundly interested in the mysterious disappearance of his colleague, the Colonial Secretary, and had sent for the detective to talk over the matter.

"Sit down, Smeaton. Have you any news? I know you are not a man to let the gra.s.s grow under your feet."

Smeaton explained the situation as it stood at present.

"We have partly identified one, and in my opinion the more important, of the two men who put him in the taxi. His name is given to me as Stent, and he is supposed to have a house somewhere in the neighbourhood of St Albans. One of my best sergeants is down there to-day, making inquiries. I fancy we are also on the track of the second man."

He added that it was to Farloe's sister, Mrs Saxton, that he was indebted for the somewhat scanty information he possessed.

"I met that lady last winter at Mentone," remarked the Home Secretary.

"She was an attractive young woman, with ingratiating manners. I remember she introduced herself to me, telling me that her brother was Monkton's secretary. My impression at the time, although I don't know that I had any particular evidence to go on, was that there was just a little touch of the adventuress about her."

"Precisely my impression," agreed the man from "over the way."

"I never took to that fellow, Farloe, either," continued the statesman.

"I don't think Monkton was particularly attached to him, although he admitted he was the best secretary he ever had. I always thought there was something shifty and underhand about him."

They talked for a few moments longer, exchanging probable and possible theories, and then Smeaton rose to take his leave.

"Well, Mr Carlingford, thanks to your kind help we have been able to keep it out of the Press so far. I hope our inquiries will soon bear some fruit," he said, and then left the room.

Sheila had gone home feeling very sad and lonely. All her plans for the day had been upset by Wingate's sudden journey to Brighton.

She had looked forward to spending some hours in the society of her lover. The excitement of the detective business in which they proposed to engage for the rest of the day would have taken her out of herself, and kept alive the courage which flagged sorely now and again, as she confronted the apparently insoluble problem of her beloved father's disappearance.

Her luncheon finished, she went into her own dainty little sitting-room and tried to read. But she could not focus her attention. Her thoughts strayed away from the printed page, and at last she flung down the book impatiently.

"I wish that I had insisted on going down to Brighton with Austin," she said to herself. "I think I must get out. I shall go mad if I stop within these four walls."

As she was making up her mind, the door opened, and old Grant entered.

"A lady would like to see you. Miss," he said. "She says her name is Saxton and that you know her, as she is Mr Farloe's sister. She says she has been here once, but I don't seem to remember her."

Sheila was immediately interested. Their acquaintance was of the slightest. She recalled the incident at the post-office, and wondered what was the object of the visit.

"Yes, she came once to a big party. Grant. You have shown her into the drawing-room, I suppose? I will see her."

She went at once to the drawing-room. Mrs Saxton rose as she entered, and advanced towards her with outstretched hand, her pretty, rather hard features subdued to an expression of deep sympathy.

"My dear Miss Monkton, I do hope you will not regard my visit as an intrusion," she exclaimed fussily. "But, owing to my brother's connection with your family, I was bound to know something of what has happened. And I feel so deeply for you."

Sheila replied with some conventional phrase, but her manner was constrained and cold. Mrs Saxton was acting, no doubt to the best of her capacity, but there was an absence of sincerity in voice and glance.

She had come, not out of sympathy, but for her own ends. Sheila remembered what Smeaton had said, namely, that she knew a good deal more than she chose to tell. She also remembered the telegram which had been despatched a few hours ago. Was it possible Mrs Saxton had caught sight of her at the post-office in Edgware Road after all, and had come with the intention of pumping her?

Whatever the motives might be, Sheila made up her mind to one thing-- that she would say as little as possible, and ask questions rather than answer them.

"What has Mr Farloe told you?"

"Oh, as little as he possibly could. But although it has been very cleverly kept from the Press, rumours are flying about at the clubs, in the House of Commons, everywhere. Your father has not been seen for several days, and he is much too important a man not to be missed."

Sheila made no answer. She was resolved to take a very pa.s.sive _role_ in this interview which had been thrust upon her. She looked steadily at Mrs Saxton, who bore the scrutiny of those candid young eyes with absolute composure, and waited for her to resume the conversation.

"A rather strange thing happened the other day," went on her visitor, after a somewhat lengthy pause. "I had a visit from a Scotland Yard official, of the name of Smeaton. He told me he was very much interested in a Mr Stent, whose acquaintance I happened to make abroad a couple of years ago. I wonder if this Mr Stent happens to be a friend of yours, or your father's?" This time Sheila felt she could make a direct answer without committing herself. "I certainly do not know the man myself. For my father I cannot, of course, speak positively. In his position he must have known heaps of people, more or less intimately. But, as I have never seen him in this house, he could not have been a friend."

Mrs Saxton spoke again in her well-bred, but somewhat artificial voice:

"I hope you will excuse me for having put the question. But it struck me after he had left that his visit might have been connected with the sad events that have happened here, and that he believed Mr Stent to have been mixed up with them."

"Were you able to give him any information?" asked Sheila quickly. She thought it was her turn to question now.

"Nothing, I am afraid, of any value. I had simply met him abroad at an hotel, in the first place, and came across him about a dozen times afterwards. You know what a lot of people one picks up in that casual sort of way, people you know absolutely nothing about."

Sheila agreed that this was a common experience, and after the interchange of a few commonplaces, Mrs Saxton took leave. She renewed her expressions of sympathy, and begged Miss Monkton to make use of her in any way, if she thought she could render a.s.sistance.

What had been the motive of her visit? To reiterate the slenderness of her knowledge of the man Stent, so that the fact would be communicated to Smeaton? Or had she hoped to find an artless and impressionable girl, who would confide to her all that had been done, up to the present, to unravel the mystery of Monkton's disappearance?

If so, she had signally failed. She had gone away, having learned nothing. And Sheila had put no questions herself, although she was burning to ask her: "Who is that man at Brighton to whom you sent the telegram of warning?"

It had been a day of surprises, and events proceeded very rapidly, mostly in the direction of disappointments.

In the first place, Smeaton was rung up from Brighton by Wingate, who reported the failure of his attempt to get hold of the telegram, and asked for further instructions.

The detective mused a few moments before replying. He placed little or no reliance on the efforts of amateurs, however full of zeal. Still, the young man was there, and he might as well make use of him.

"Would it be inconveniencing you to spend a few more hours down there?"

he asked at length over the wire from his room at Scotland Yard.

The reply was what might be expected. Wingate would be only too happy to place himself entirely at Smeaton's disposal.

"Thanks. In that case, I would ask you to keep a watch on the post-office for as long as you think worth while. This fellow will be pretty certain to call again in an hour or two for another wire. You may depend their correspondence has not finished with that first telegram."

So that was settled; it was a toss-up whether or not anything would result from Wingate's observations.