“Oh, he respects you all right. But he gets his back up wondering just how the trick is done. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye, and the Chief doesn’t like having his eye deceived. He likes to take things decently and in order, with plenty of time to think everything out a step at a time. When you get there in a flash of lightning he begins to suspect the unlawful arts.”

She smiled indulgently.

“When you have finished talking nonsense, Frank, you will perhaps let me tell you that my information about Thomasina and Anna was derived from nothing more supernatural than the Agony Column of the Times. I was struck by the two old-fashioned names, and when you mentioned one of them I naturally remembered the other.”

He laughed.

“Things are always so simple when they have been explained! She did mention that she had put in an advertisement. I didn’t see it myself. What did it say?”

Miss Silver pulled on the large ball which lurked in a knitting bag of gaily flowered chintz.

“ ‘Anna’-that is how it began. And then, I think, ‘Where are you? Do please write.’ And it was signed, ‘Thomasina.’ Perhaps you will now tell me a little more.”

“The names are Anna Ball and Thomasina Elliot. Thomasina is the one with the eyes. Anna sounds as dull as ditchwater, but she has disappeared, and Thomasina wants to find her. When I say disappeared I am quoting Thomasina. She apparently thinks herself responsible because Anna hasn’t any relations. School friendship. Pretty, popular girl taking up the cudgels for dreary, unpopular one. Three years’ intensive post-school letter-writing on Anna’s part. Generous response by Thomasina. A last letter saying Anna was going to a new job and would write when she got there. And then finish. No address. No hint of any destination. Previous jobs, nursery governess for over two years, and companion for one month. No clue as to new job. Might be anything from a housemaid to a henwife- and I rather gather she was likely to be a washout at whatever it was-

He broke off suddenly to enquire, “Why are you looking at me like that? You can’t possibly be interested. I can assure you that nothing can be duller than the whole affair.”

She gave him her charming smile.

“Yet you have introduced the subject with care, and you are quite unable to let it drop.”

He had a half laughing, half rueful expression which took years off his age.

“You always see right through one. The case is dull, and Anna sounds deadly. I keep on telling myself that she has probably just got fed up with writing to Thomasina, or she has taken a huff about something-that sort does. Or she has found herself a young man-which doesn’t sound the least likely, but the oddest specimens do-in which case she wouldn’t have any more use for the girl friend.”

Miss Silver shook her head in a very decided manner.

“Oh, no, it would not have that effect at all. She would be pleased and excited, and her letters to Thomasina would be long and full. It did not happen like that.”

“Then the only possible spark of interest expires.”

“Yet you are interested.”

“I can’t imagine why I should be. There’s nothing to it- just a girl who has stopped writing.”

Miss Silver echoed his words in a very thoughtful manner.

“Just a girl who has stopped writing.”

CHAPTER IV

A couple of days had passed when Miss Silver looked up from the letter she was writing and lifted the receiver of the table telephone. Inspector Abbott’s voice greeted her by name.

“Hullo! Here we are! Marvellous and beneficent instrument the telephone-except when it wakes you in the middle of the night and you wish that the progress of science had stopped short at rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. But, as you are about to remark, that isn’t what I rang you up to talk about. ‘Hail, vain deluding joys!’ and all the rest of it. Business before pleasure.”

“My dear Frank!”

“I know-I’m getting there. In the matter of Thomasina Elliot-”

Miss Silver said,

“You are not speaking from Scotland Yard.”

A suspicion of a laugh came to her along the wire.

“How right you are! The official style is more restrained. I am in a call-box. In the matter of Thomasina we appear to have got to a dead end. To start with, there isn’t any evidence that the girl Anna really has disappeared, and no clue as to where to begin to look for her. In fact, as I said, a dead end. There were just two chances. One, that an advertisement would produce something. Well, Thomasina has advertised, and we have had a wireless appeal put out. We had to strain a point there, but a string or two was pulled and we got it done. No response. The second chance was that Mrs. Dugdale, the last employer, or someone in her household might know something. A girl who is going to a new job is practically bound to say something about it to somebody. She asks for a reference-she leaves an address for letters to be forwarded. Well, according to Mrs. Dugdale and her household Anna didn’t do any of these things. Hobson went round to see them, and he says they were most unco-operative. Mrs. Dugdale appeared to be threatened with a nervous collapse every time she was asked to remember anything. He opined that it really was nerves, and not a guilty conscience. He said he had an aunt who was just the same, and she fairly wore everyone out. Getting sense out of her was like trying to get water out of an empty well-no matter how often you sent the bucket down it would always come up dry. From which you may deduce that our Sergeant Hobson grew up in a village which still pumped its water from its native springs.”

“And Mrs. Dugdale’s household?”

“Impenetrability, as Humpty Dumpty remarked! There is a personal maid who sounds like a cross between a steel trap and an oyster. The other two-there really are two more-are both elderly, and wouldn’t demean themselves by getting mixed up with the police. Hobson opined they didn’t know anything but wouldn’t have talked if they did. And that is where you come in.”

Miss Silver said in a deprecatory manner,

“May I ask in what capacity?”

She heard him laugh.

“Oh, strictly professional. Thomasina is coming to see you. She has come in for quite a lot of money from an aunt, and no expense is to be spared. I told her that if anyone could charm an oyster into speech, it was you. Seriously, you know, someone in that Dugdale lot must know something. Thumbscrews being out of date, there doesn’t seem to be any way of making them talk. Anna left them alive and in her right mind-”

“How did she go?”

“By bus, with a single suit-case which was all she brought with her. She had only been there a month, you know. She sent a box to Thomasina in Scotland and said she would write for it later. Well, she didn’t write.”

Miss Silver asked a pertinent question.

“Where was the bus going to?”

“That’s just what nobody knows. Anna walked to the end of the road and took a bus. Six buses pass there. No one knows which one of them Anna took. Nice simple little problem, isn’t it? She could have gone to King’s Cross, Waterloo, Victoria, Baker Street, Holborn, or the Tottenham Court Road. She could have got off her bus and travelled by tube. She could have gone to Scotland by motor coach. She could have taken a taxi and driven down to the docks. Anybody’s guess is as good as anybody else’s.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

An hour or two later Thomasina Elliot sat in one of the curly walnut chairs and gazed at Miss Silver. She had been sitting there for not more than twenty-five minutes, but she had already told this dowdy little ex-governess quite a number of things which she had not seen fit to impart to Peter Brandon or to Detective Inspector Abbott.

Things about Anna Ball-“She depended on me. People oughtn’t to depend on each other like that. I did my best to stop her, but it wasn’t any use, and she just hadn’t got anyone else. That is how I am quite sure she didn’t just get bored and stop writing. She hasn’t got any family, and she hasn’t got any friends. She hasn’t got anyone except me. I’ve got to find her.”