Chapter I

He was very argumentative that morning; whatever I said he invariably contradicted flatly and at once, and we both had finally succeeded in losing our temper.

The man in the corner was riding one of his favourite hobby-horses.

“It is _impossible_ for any person to completely disappear in a civilised country,” he said emphatically, “provided that person has either friends or enemies of means and substance, who are interested in finding his or her whereabouts.”

“Impossible is a sweeping word,” I rejoined.

“None too big for the argument,” he concluded, as he surveyed with evident pride and pleasure a gigantic and complicated knot which his bony fingers had just fashioned.

“I think that, nevertheless, you should not use it,” I said placidly. “It is not _impossible_, though it may be very difficult to disappear without leaving the slightest clue or trace behind you.”

“Prove it,” he said, with a snap of his thin lips.

“I can, quite easily.”

“Now I know what is going on in your mind,” said the uncanny creature, “you are thinking of that case last autumn.”

“Well, I was,” I admitted. “And you cannot deny that Count Collini has disappeared as effectually as if the sea had swallowed him up—many people think it did.”

“Many idiots, you mean,” he rejoined dryly. “Yes, I knew you would quote that case. It certainly was a curious one; all the more so, perhaps, as there was no inquest, no sensational police court proceedings, nothing dramatic, in fact, save that strange and wonderful disappearance.

“I don’t know if you call to mind the whole plot of that weird drama. There was Thomas Checkfield, a retired biscuit baker of Reading, who died leaving a comfortable fortune, mostly invested in freehold property, and amounting to about £80,000, to his only child, Alice.

“At the time of her father’s death, Alice Checkfield was just eighteen, and at school in Switzerland, where she had spent most of her life. Old Checkfield had been a widower ever since the birth of his daughter, and seems to have led a very lonely and eccentric life; leaving the girl at school abroad for years, only going very occasionally to see her, and seemingly having but little affection for her.

“The girl herself had not been home in England since she was eight years old, and even when old Checkfield was dying he would not allow the girl to be apprised of his impending death, and to be brought home to a house of loneliness and mourning.

“‘What’s the good of upsetting a young girl, not eighteen,’ he said to his friend, Mr. Turnour, ‘by letting her see all the sad paraphernalia of death? She hasn’t seen much of her old father anyway, and will soon get over her loss, with young company round her, to help her bear up.’

“But though Thomas Checkfield cared little enough for his daughter, when he died he left his entire fortune to her, amounting altogether to £80,000; and he appointed his friend, Reginald Turnour, to be her trustee and guardian until her marriage or until she should attain her majority.

“It was generally understood that the words ‘until her marriage’ were put in because it had all along been arranged that Alice should marry Hubert Turnour, Reginald’s younger brother.

“Hubert was old Checkfield’s godson, and if the old man had any affection for anybody it certainly was for Hubert. The latter had been a great deal in his godfather’s house, when he and Alice were both small children, and had called each other ‘hubby’ and ‘wifey’ in play, when they were still in the nursery. Later on, whenever old Checkfield went abroad to see his daughter, he always took Hubert with him, and a boy and girl flirtation sprang up between the two young people; a flirtation which had old Checkfield’s complete approval, and no doubt he looked upon their marriage as a _fait accompli_, merely desiring the elder Mr. Turnour to administer the girl’s fortune until then.

“Hubert Turnour, at the time of the subsequent tragedy, was a good-looking young fellow, and by profession what is vaguely known as a ‘commission agent.’ He lived in London, where he had an office in a huge block of buildings close to Cannon Street Station.

“There is no doubt that at the time of old Checkfield’s death, Alice looked upon herself as the young man’s _fiancée_. When the girl reached her nineteenth year, it was at last decided that she should leave school and come to England. The question as to what should be done with her until her majority, or until she married Hubert, was a great puzzle to Mr. Turnour. He was a bachelor, who lived in comfortable furnished rooms in Reading, and he did not at all relish the idea of starting housekeeping for the sake of his young ward, whom he had not seen since she was out of the nursery, and whom he looked upon as an intolerable nuisance.

“Fortunately for him this vexed question was most satisfactorily and unexpectedly settled by Alice herself. She wrote to her guardian, from Geneva, that a Mrs. Brackenbury, the mother of her dearest schoolfellow had asked her to come and live with them, at any rate for a time, as this would be a more becoming arrangement than that of a young girl sharing a bachelor’s establishment.

“Mr. Turnour seems to have hesitated for some time: he was a conscientious sort of man, who took his duties of guardianship very seriously. What ultimately decided him, however, was that his brother Hubert added the weight of his eloquent letters of appeal to those of Alice herself. Hubert naturally was delighted at the idea of having his rich _fiancée_ under his eye in London, and after a good deal of correspondence, Mr. Turnour finally gave his consent, and Alice Checkfield duly arrived from Switzerland in order to make a prolonged stay in Mrs. Brackenbury’s house.”