‘He paid the quarter’s rent in advance and a deposit to cover the electric light and gas.’ ‘Oh!’ said Frankie, feeling despairing.
She saw the young man looking rather curiously at her.
House agents are adepts at summing up the ‘class’ of clients.
He obviously found Frankie’s interest in the Caymans rather unexpected.
‘He owes me a good deal of money,’ said Frankie mendaciously.
The young man’s face immediately assumed a shocked expression.
Thoroughly sympathetic with beauty in distress, he hunted up files of correspondence and did all he could, but no trace of Mr Cayman’s present or late abode could be found.
Frankie thanked him and departed. She took a taxi to the next firm of house agents. She wasted no time in repeating the process. The first agents were the ones who had let Cayman the house. These people would be merely concerned to let it again on behalf of the owner. Frankie asked for an order to view.
This time, to counteract the expression of surprise that she saw appear on the clerk’s face, she explained that she wanted a cheap property to open as a hostel for girls. The surprised expression disappeared, and Frankie emerged with the key of 17 Leonard’s Gardens, the keys of two more ‘properties’ which she had no wish to see, and an order to view yet a fourth.
It was a bit of luck, Frankie thought, that the clerk had not wished to accompany her, but perhaps they only did that when it was a question of a furnished tenancy.
The musty smell of a closed-up house assailed Frankie’s nostrils as she unlocked and pushed open the front door of No. 17.
It was an unappetising house, cheaply decorated, and with blistered, dirty paint. Frankie went over it methodically from garret to basement. The house had not been cleaned up on departure. There were bits of string, old newspapers and some odd nails and tools. But of personal matter, Frankie could not find so much as the scrap of a tom-up letter.
The only thing that struck her as having a possible significance was an ABC railway guide which lay open on one of the window seats. There was nothing to indicate that any of the names of the open page were of special significance, but Frankie copied the lot down in a little note-book as a poor substitute for all she had hoped to find.
As far as tracing the Caymans was concerned, she had drawn a blank.
She consoled herself with the reflection that this was only to be expected. If Mr and Mrs Cayman were associated with the wrong side of the law they would take particularly good care that no one should be able to trace them. It was at least a kind of negative confirmatory evidence.
Still Frankie felt definitely disappointed as she handed back the keys to the house agents and uttered mendacious statements as to communicating with them in a few days.
She walked down towards the Park feeling rather depressed and wondered what on earth she was going to do next. These fruitless meditations were interrupted by a sharp and violent squall of rain. No taxi was in sight and Frankie hurriedly preserved a favourite hat by hurrying into the tube which was close at hand. She took a ticket to Piccadilly Circus and bought a couple of papers at the bookstall.
When she had entered the train – almost empty at this time of day – she resolutely banished thoughts of the vexing problem and, opening her paper, strove to concentrate her attention on its contents.
She read desultory snippets here and there.
Number of road deaths. Mysterious disappearance of a schoolgirl. Lady Peterhampton’s party at Claridge’s. Sir John Milkington’s convalescence after his accident yachting – the Astradora – the famous yacht which had belonged to the late Mr John Savage, the millionaire. Was she an unlucky boat?
The man who had designed her had met with a tragic death Mr Savage had committed suicide – Sir John Milkington had just escaped death by a miracle.
Frankie lowered the paper, frowning in an effort of remembrance.
Twice before, the name of Mr John Savage had been mentioned – once by Sylvia Bassington-ffrench when she was speaking of Alan Carstairs, and once by Bobby when he was repeating the conversation he had had with Mrs Rivington.