Part 28 (1/2)

The young lady, turning to the older one, made a queer movement with her hands.

'I don't understand her in the very faintest atom; do you? Do you think she's--quite right in her mind?'

'Hus.h.!.+' said the other.

She came to me. And I saw that she wasn't so very old after all. While for loveliness I had never seen anything like her. Compared to her I was like a doll. She was beautifully dressed, and she had a way about her I can't describe. And such a voice it did you good to hear her speak.

'Sit down, my dear,' she said. I sat down, and she sat down beside me.

'Now tell me all about it from the beginning. Where do you live?'

'At 32 Little Olive Street, Vauxhall Bridge Road.'

'And you say that your name is Merrett, and your husband is known as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe. What is he?'

'Anything and everything.'

'That's rather vague.'

'The last thing he did was a thirty days' sleep at the Royal Aquarium.'

'A thirty days' sleep. Now I think I begin to understand. I remember reading something about it in the papers. So that was your husband?'

'That was my James. And that was where Mr. Smith--or Mr. Howarth, as it seems that he is--first saw him.'

'Indeed! And when did he first see him? On what day?'

'Let me see. It was the Thursday before he went away--that was a fortnight last Thursday.'

'A fortnight last Thursday?'

The young lady burst out with something I didn't understand.

'How very odd! That was the day on which he first saw Twickenham.'

The other lady was silent for, I should think, quite a minute. And when she did speak her voice seemed changed.

'Yes; it is odd. At that time your husband was giving an exhibition as--what?'

'As a sleeping man.'

'As a sleeping man? What a strange thing to do! What kind of man is your husband? Is he old?'

'He's older than I am.'

'Older than you are? About forty?'

'About that, I should think.'

'Have you known him all your life?'