"But if you imagine it might not have been Miss Garth who made the call, why are you here?"
Then the detective laughed. His wonted air of cheerful good humor smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead. He was beaten, completely discomfited, and he might as well confess it and betake himself to some quarter where a likelier trail could be followed.
"True," he said affably. "I need not bother the young lady. Perhaps you will make my excuses and tell her that I ran you to earth in Gloucester Mansions merely to save time. By the way, I led the youth at the call office to believe that I was searching for an undersized Polish Jewess, all nose and gold earrings, a description which hardly applies to Miss Garth. And one last question--do you return to Roxton tonight?"
So Winter descended the stone stairs a second time, a prey to a feeling of failure. What had he gained by his impetuous actions? He had ascertained that Hilton Fenley was on terms of close intimacy with a pretty girl and her mother. Nothing very remarkable in that. He had secured a Paris address and the number of a baggage registration label. But similar information might be gleaned from a hundred thousand boxes and portmanteaux in London that day. He had been told that Mortimer Fenley had made a holograph will. Such procedure was by no means rare. Millions sterling have been disposed of on half sheets of note paper. Even his Majesty's judges have written similar wills, and blundered, with the result that a brother learned in the law has had to decide what the testator really meant. He wondered whether or not Mortimer Fenley had committed some technical error, such as the common one of creating a trust without appointing trustees. That would be seen in due course, when the will was probated.
At any rate, he grinned at his own expense.
"The only individual who has scored today," he said to himself, "is John Christopher Drake, alias Giovanni Maselli. I must keep mum about him. By gad, I believe I've compounded a felony!"
But because he had not scored inside Gloucester Mansions there was no valid reason why he should not accomplish something in their immediate neighborhood. For instance, who and what were the Garths, mother and daughter? He looked in on a well-known dramatic agent, and raised the point. Reference to a ledger showed that Eileen Garth, age eighteen, tall, good-looking, no previous experience, had been a candidate for musical comedy, London engagement alone accepted; the almost certain sequel being that she had kept her name six months on the books without an offer to secure her valuable services.