_ PART I. A WOMAN OF MYSTERY
CHAPTER II. THE LADY IN NUMBER THREE
The boy was soon found and proved to be more observing in matters of dress than Mr. Ransom. He described with apparent accuracy both the color and cut of the garments worn by the lady who had flitted away so mysteriously. The former was brown, all brown; and the latter was of the tailor-made variety, very natty and becoming. "What you would call 'swell,'" was the comment, "if her walk hadn't spoiled the hang of it. How she did walk! Her shoes must have hurt her most uncommon. I never did see any one hobble so."
"How's that? She hobbled, and her husband didn't notice it?"
"Oh, he had hurried on ahead. She was behind him, and she walked like this."
The pantomime was highly expressive.
"That's a point," muttered Gerridge. Then with a sharp look at the boy: "Where were you that you didn't notice her when she slipped off?"
"Oh, but I did, sir. I was waiting for the clerk to give me the key, when I saw her step back from the gentleman's side and, looking quickly round to see if any one was noticing her, slide off into the reception-room. I thought she wanted a drink of water out of the pitcher on the center-table, but if she did, she didn't come back after she had got it. None of us ever saw her again."
"Did you follow Mr. Ransom when he walked through those rooms?"
"No, sir; I stayed in the hall."
"Did the lady hobble when she slid thus mysteriously out of sight?"
"A little. Not so much as when she came in. But she wasn't at her ease, sir. Her shoes were certainly too small."
"I think I will take a peep at those rooms now," Gerridge remarked to the manager.
Mr. Loomis bowed, and together they crossed the office to the reception-room door. The diagram of this portion of the hotel will give you an idea of these connecting rooms.
There are three of them, as you will see, all reception-rooms. Mr. Ransom had passed through them all in looking for his wife. In No. 1 he found several ladies sitting and standing, all strangers. He encountered no one in No. 2, and in No. 3 just one person, a lady in street costume evidently waiting for some one. To this lady he had addressed himself, asking if she had seen any one pass that way the moment before. Her reply was a decided "No"; that she had been waiting in that same room for several minutes and had seen no one. This staggered him. It was as if his wife had dissolved into thin air. True, she might have eluded him by slipping out into the hall by means of door two at the moment he entered door one; and alert to this possibility, he hastened back into the hall to look for her. But she was nowhere visible, nor had she been observed leaving the building by the man stationed at entrance A. But there was another exit, that of B. Had she gone out that way? Mr. Ransom had taken pains to inquire and had been assured by the man in charge that no lady had left by that door during the last ten minutes. This he had insisted on, and when Mr. Loomis and the detective came in their turn to question him on this point he insisted on it again. The mystery seemed complete,--at least to the manager. But the detective was not quite satisfied. He asked the man if at any time that day, before or after Mrs. Ransom's disappearance, he had swung the door open for a lady who walked lame. The answer was decisive. "Yes; one who walked as if her shoes were tight."
"When?"
"Oh a little while after the gentleman asked his questions."
"Was she dressed in brown?"
That he didn't know. He didn't look at ladies' dresses unless they were something special.
"But she walked lame and she came from Room 3?"
Yes. He remembered that much.
Gerridge, with a nod to the manager, stepped into the open compartment of the whirling door. "I'm off," said he. "Expect to hear from me in two hours."
At twenty minutes to ten Mr. Ransom was called up on the telephone.
"One question, Mr. Ransom."
"Hello, who are you?"
"Gerridge."
"All right, go ahead."
"Did you see the face of the woman you spoke to in Room No. 3?"
"Of course. She was looking directly at me."
"You remember it? Could identify it if you saw it again?"
"Yes; that is--"
"That's all, good-by."
The circuit was cut off.
Another intolerable wait. Then there came a knock on the door and Gerridge entered. He held a photograph in his hand which he had evidently taken from his pocket on his way up.
"Look at this," said he. "Do you recognize the face?"
"The lady--"
"Just so; the one who said she had seen no one come into No. 3 on the
first floor."
Mr. Ransom's expression of surprised inquiry was sufficient answer.
"Well, it's a pity you didn't look at her gloves instead of at her face. You might have had some dim idea of having seen them before. It was she who rode to the hotel with you; not your wife. The veil was wound around her face for a far deeper purpose than to ward off rice."
Mr. Ransom staggered back against the table before which he had been standing. The blow was an overwhelming one.
"Who is this woman?" he demanded. "She came from Mr. Fulton's house. More than that, from my wife's room. What is her name and what did she mean by such an outrage?"
"Her name is Bella Burton, and she is your wife's confidential maid. As for the meaning of this outrage, it will take more than two hours to ferret out that. I can only give you the single fact I've mentioned."
"And Mrs. Ransom?"
"She left the house at the same moment you did; you and Miss Burton. Only she went by the basement door."
"She? _She?_"
"Dressed in her maid's clothes. Oh, you'll have to hear worse things than that before we're out of this muddle. If you won't mind a bit of advice from a man of experience, I would suggest that you take things easy. It's the only way."
Shocked into silence by this cold-blooded philosophy, Mr. Ransom controlled both his anger and his humiliation; but he could not control his surprise.
"What does it mean?" he murmured to himself. "_What does it all mean?_" _