“Yes, I might!  I would!  You see her with my eyes.”

“For the moment they are the only ones available.  When was the last time you saw the two together?”

“About the middle of November.”

“Mortlake knew nothing of the meetings?”

“I don’t know.  Perhaps he did.  Mr. Constant had probably enlisted her in his social mission work.  I knew she was one of the attendants at the big children’s tea in the Great Assembly Hall early in November.  He treated her quite like a lady.  She was the only attendant who worked with her hands.”

“The others carried the cups on their feet, I suppose.”

“No; how could that be?  My meaning is that all the other attendants were real ladies, and Jessie was only an amateur, so to speak.  There was no novelty for her in handing kids cups of tea.  I dare say she had helped her landlady often enough at that—­there’s quite a bushel of brats below stairs.  It’s almost as bad as at friend Crowl’s.  Jessie was a real brick.  But perhaps Tom didn’t know her value.  Perhaps he didn’t like Constant to call on her, and it led to a quarrel.  Anyhow, she’s disappeared, like the snowfall on the river.  There’s not a trace.  The landlady, who was such a friend of hers that Jessie used to make up her stuff into dresses for nothing, tells me that she’s dreadfully annoyed at not having been left the slightest clue to her late tenant’s whereabouts.”

“You have been making inquiries on your own account apparently?”

“Only of the landlady.  Jessie never even gave her the week’s notice, but paid her in lieu of it, and left immediately.  The landlady told me I could have knocked her down with a feather.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to do it, or I should certainly have knocked her down for not keeping her eyes open better.  She says if she had only had the least suspicion beforehand that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going, she’d have known where, or her name would have been somebody else’s.  And yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried.  Stupid old hag!”

“A woman of character,” murmured the detective.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” cried Denzil, eagerly.  “Another girl would have let out that she was going.  But no, not a word.  She plumped down the money and walked out.  The landlady ran upstairs.  None of Jessie’s things were there.  She must have quietly sold them off, or transferred them to the new place.  I never in my life met a girl who so thoroughly knew her own mind or had a mind so worth knowing.  She always reminded me of the Maid of Saragossa.”

“Indeed!  And when did she leave?”

“On the l9th of November.”

“Mortlake of course knows where she is?”

“I can’t say.  Last time I was at the house to inquire—­it was at the end of November—­he hadn’t been seen there for six weeks.  He wrote to her, of course, sometimes—­the landlady knew his writing.”