Part 41

"I have a distinct reason for asking," was my reply. "Remember that I am seeking to solve the enigma of your young mistress's present extraordinary state of mind. Any information you can give me will assist me towards that end."

As I spoke I heard a sweet contralto voice in the adjoining room break out into a song from one of the popular revues. It was Gabrielle's voice, I knew.

"All the information I possess, sir, is at your disposal," the woman assured me. "I only wish Mrs. Tennison was here to answer your questions."

"But you know as much as she does," I said. "Now tell me--what is your theory? What happened to your young mistress during the time she disappeared?"

Mrs. Alford lifted her hands in dismay.

"What can we think? She went away quite bright and happy. When she was found wandering on the road between London and Portsmouth her memory was a blank. She was haggard, worn, and much aged--aged in those few days of her absence. She could remember nothing, and all she could repeat were those strange words 'Red, green and gold.'"

"I wonder why those colours were so impressed upon her memory?" I remarked.

"Ah! That is what puzzles the doctors so. Each evening, just as it grows dark, she sits down and is silent for half an hour, with eyes downcast as though thinking deeply. Then she will suddenly start up and cry, 'Ah! I see--I see--yes--that terrible red, green and gold! Oh! it's horrible--bewildering--fascinating--red, green and gold!' The three colours seem to obsess her always at nightfall. That is what Doctor Moroni told me."

I paused for a few moments.

"You've never heard her speak of Mr. De Gex? You're quite sure?"

"Quite," was Mrs. Alford's reply. "My young mistress was studying singing at the Royal Academy of Music. Hark! You hear her now! Has she not a beautiful voice? Ah, sir--it is all a great tragedy! It has broken her mother's heart. Only to think that to-day the poor girl is without memory, and her brain is entirely unbalanced. 'Red, green and gold' is all that seems to matter to her. And whenever she recollects it and the words escape her drawn lips she seems petrified by horror."

What the woman told me was, I realized, the actual truth. And yet when I recollected that I had seen the dark-eyed victim lying dead in that spacious room in the house of Mr. De Gex in Stretton Street, I became utterly bewildered. I had seen her dead there. I had held a mirror to her half-open lips and it had not become clouded. Yet in my ears there now sounded the sweet tuneful strains of that bird-song from "Joy Bells."

Truly, the unfortunate girl possessed a glorious voice, which would make a fortune upon the concert platform or the stage.

I did my level best to obtain more information concerning the Italian doctor and the man De Gex, but the woman could tell me absolutely nothing. She was concealing nothing from me--that I knew.

It was only when I mentioned the French banker, Monsieur Suzor, that she started and became visibly perturbed.

"I have no knowledge of the gentleman," she declared. Yet had I not seen them together in Kensington Gardens?

"I don't know whether he is known to you as Suzor," I said. Then I described him as accurately as I could.

But the woman shook her head. For the first time she now lied to me. With my own eyes I had seen the man approach her and the girl, and after they had greeted each other, she had risen and left the girl alone with him.

Curiously enough when the pair were alone together they seemed to understand each other. I recollected it all most vividly.

To say the least it was strange why, being so frank upon other details, she so strenuously denied all knowledge of the affable Frenchman who had been my fellow-traveller from York almost immediately preceding my strange adventures in the heart of London.

My conversation with her had been, to say the least, highly illuminating, and I had learnt several facts of which I had been in ignorance. But this fixed assertion that she knew nothing of the elusive Frenchman aroused my suspicions.

What was she hiding from me?

I felt that she was concealing some very essential point--one that might well prove the clue to the whole puzzling enigma.

And while we spoke the girl's clear contralto rang out, while she herself played the accompaniment.

At length I saw that I could obtain no further information from the servant, therefore I begged to be introduced to her young mistress, assuring her of my keen interest in the most puzzling problem.

Apparently relieved that I pressed her no further regarding the handsome but insidious Frenchman, the woman at once ushered me into the adjoining room--a small but well-furnished one--where at the grand piano sat the girl whose eyes were fixed, though not sightless as I had believed when in Florence.

She turned them suddenly upon my companion, and stopped playing.

"Ah! dear Alford!" she exclaimed, "I wondered if you were at home." Then she paused. She apparently had no knowledge of my presence, for she had not turned to me, though I stood straight in her line of gaze. "I thought you had gone out to see Monsieur--to tell him my message." She again paused, and drew her breath.