"I cannot wait for Dr. Leeds to come round," Hilda said the next morning at breakfast. "You and I will pay him a visit in Harley Street. I am sure that he will not grudge a quarter of an hour to hear what you have done."
"What mystery are you two girls engaged in?" Miss Purcell asked, as she placidly poured out the tea.
"It is a little plot of our own, aunt," Netta said. "We are trying to get on Walter's track in our own way, and to be for a time amateur detectives. So far we have not found any decisive clew, but I think that we are searching in the right direction. Please trust us entirely, and we hope some day we shall have the triumph of bringing Walter back, safe and sound."
"I pray God that it may be so, my dear. I know that you are both sensible girls, and not likely to get yourselves into any silly scrape."
"I don't think we are, aunt; but I am afraid that neither of us would consider any scrape a foolish one that brought us even a little bit nearer to the object of our search. At any rate, aunt, it will reassure you to know that we are acting in concert with Dr. Leeds, of whom I know that you entertain the highest opinion."
"Certainly I do. Of course I am no judge whatever as to whether he is a good doctor, but I should think, from what Dr. Pearson says, that he must, in the opinion of other medical men, be considered an exceptionally clever man for his age; and having seen him for four months and lived in close contact with him, I would rather be attended by him than by anyone else I have ever met. His kindness to the General was unceasing.[Pg 165] Had he been his son, he could not have been more patient and more attentive. He showed wonderful skill in managing him, and was at once sympathetic and cheerful. But, more than that, I admired his tact in filling the somewhat difficult position in which he was placed. Although he was completely one of the family, and any stranger would have supposed that he was a brother, or at least a cousin, there was always something in his manner that, even while laughing and chatting with us all, placed a little barrier between us and himself; and one felt that, although most essentially a friend, he was still there as the General's medical attendant.
"It was a difficult position for a man of his age to be placed in. Had he been like most of the doctors we knew in Germany, a man filled with the idea that he must always be a professor of medicine, and impressing people with his learning and gravity, it might have been easy enough. But there is nothing of that sort about him at all; he is just as high-spirited and is as bright and cheerful as other young men of about the same age, and it was only when he was with the General that his gentleness of manner recalled the fact that he was a doctor. As I say, it was a difficult position, with only an old woman like myself and two girls, who looked to him for comfort and hope, who treated him as if he had been an old friend, and were constantly appealing to him for his opinion on all sorts of subjects.
"I confess that, when he first came here with Dr. Pearson, I thought that it was a very rash experiment to introduce a young and evidently pleasant man to us under such circumstances, especially as you, Hilda, are a rich heiress and your own mistress; and feeling as I did that I was in the position of your chaperon, I must say that at first I felt very anxious about you, and it was a great relief to me when after a time I saw no signs, either on his part or yours, of any feeling stronger than friendship springing up."
Hilda laughed merrily.
"The idea never entered into my mind, aunt; it is[Pg 166] funny to me that so many people should think that a young man and a young woman cannot be thrown together without falling in love with each other. At present, fortunately, I don't quite understand what falling in love means. I like Dr. Leeds better, I think, than any young man I ever met, but I don't think that it can be in the least like what people feel when they fall in love. Certainly it was always as uncle's doctor, rather than as a possible suitor for my hand—that is the proper expression, isn't it?—that I thought of him."
"So I was glad to perceive, Hilda; and I was very thankful that it was so. Against him personally I had nothing to say, quite the contrary; but I saw that he was greatly attached to a profession in which he seems likely to make himself a fine position, and nothing could be more uncomfortable than that such a man should marry a girl with a fine country estate. Either he would have to give up his profession or she would have to settle down in London as the wife of a physician, and practically forfeit all her advantages."
Hilda again laughed.
"It is wonderful that all these things should never have occurred to me, aunt. I see now how fortunate it was that I did not fall in love with him. And now, Netta, as we have finished breakfast, we will put on our things at once and go and consult our physician in ordinary. We have a fair chance of being the first to arrive if we start immediately. I told Roberts to have the carriage at the door at half-past nine, and he does not begin to see patients until ten."
"Bravo! Miss Purcell," Dr. Leeds exclaimed, when she had given him an account of her mission. "Of course there is nothing absolutely proved, but at least it shows that his identity is open to doubt, since none of the people he had known recognized him at first sight, and of course all his knowledge of them may have been picked up from the gossiping old lady, his aunt. Something has been gained, but the evidence is rather negative than positive. It is possible that he is not the man[Pg 167] that he pretends to be; though at present, putting aside the question of handwriting, we must admit that the balance of probability is very much the other way. To begin with, how could this man, supposing him to be an impostor, know that John Simcoe was born in Stowmarket, and had relatives living there?"
"I forgot to mention that, Dr. Leeds. An advertisement was inserted in the county paper, saying that if any relatives of John Simcoe, who left England about 1830, would communicate with someone or other in town they would hear something to their advantage. I was told this by one of Miss Simcoe's friends, who saw it in the paper and brought it in to her. She was very proud of having made the discovery, and regarded herself quite in the light of a benefactor to Miss Simcoe. I remarked, when she told me, that it was curious he should have advertised instead of coming down himself to inquire. Miss Simcoe said that she had expressed surprise to him, and that he had said he did so because he should have shrunk from coming down, had he not learned there was someone to welcome him."
"Curious," Dr. Leeds said thoughtfully. "We may quite put it out of our minds that the reason he gave was the real one. A man of this kind would not have suffered any very severe shock had he found that Stowmarket and all it contained had been swallowed up by an earthquake. No, certainly that could not have been the reason; we must think of some other. And now, ladies, as this is the third card I have had brought in since you arrived, I must leave the matter as it stands. I think that we are getting on much better than we could have expected."
"That advertisement is very curious, Netta," Hilda said as they drove back. "Why should he have put it in? It would have been so much more natural that he should have gone straight down."
"I cannot think, Hilda. It did not strike me particularly when I heard of it, and I did not give it a thought afterwards. You see, I did not mention it, either to you[Pg 168] or Dr. Leeds, until it flashed across my mind when we were talking. Of course I did not see the advertisement itself, but Miss Simcoe told me that there had been a good deal of discussion before she answered it, as some of them had thought that it might be a trick."
"When was it he went down?"
"It was in August last year; and it was in the first week in September that he came here."
"He went down to get or manufacture proof of his identity," Hilda said. "As it turned out, uncle accepted his statement at once, and never had the smallest doubt as to his being John Simcoe. The precaution, therefore, was unnecessary; but at the same time it certainly helps him now that a doubt has arisen. It would have been very strange if a man possessing sufficient means to travel in India should have had no friends or connections in England. I was present when he told my uncle that he had been down to see his aunt at Stowmarket, and in the spring he brought a gentleman who, he said, was manager of the Stowmarket Bank, in which he had himself been at one time a clerk. So you see he did strengthen his position by going down there."
"It strengthens it in one way, Hilda, but in the other it weakens it. As long as no close inquiries were made, it was doubtless an advantage to him to have an aunt of the same name in Stowmarket, and to be able to prove by means of a gentleman in the position of manager of the bank that he, John Simcoe, had worked under him three or four and twenty years ago. On the other hand, it was useful to us as a starting-point. If we had been utterly in the dark as to Simcoe's birthplace or past career, we should have had to start entirely in the dark. Now, at any rate, we have located the birthplace of the real man, and learned something of his position, his family, and how he became possessed of money that enabled him to start on a tour round the world. I adhere as firmly as before to the belief that this is not the real man, and the next step is to discover how he learned that John Simcoe had lived at Stowmarket. At any rate it[Pg 169] would be as well that we should find the advertisement. It might tell us nothing, but at the least we should learn the place to which answers were to be sent. How should we set about that?"
"I can get a reader's ticket for the British Museum, because the chief librarian was a friend of uncle's and dined with him several times," Hilda replied. "If I write to him and say that I want to examine some files of newspapers, to determine a question of importance, I am sure that he will send me a ticket at once. I may as well ask for one for you also. We may want to go there again to decide some other point."
Hilda at once wrote a note and sent Tom Roberts with it to the Museum, and he returned two hours later with the tickets.
"There are three Suffolk papers," the chief assistant in the Newspaper Department said courteously, on their sending up the usual slip of paper. "Which do you want?"
"I do not know. I should like to see them all three, please; the numbers for the first two weeks in August last."
In a few minutes three great volumes were placed on the table. These contained a year's issue, and on turning to the first week in August they found that the advertisement had appeared in all of the papers. They carefully copied it out, and were about to leave the library when Netta said:
"Let us talk this over for a minute or two before we go. It seems to me that there is a curious omission in the advertisement."
"What is that?"
"Don'............