LITMIR.BIZ

CHAPTER II

       THE LOST FORMULA

       Table of Contents

      The two young men stood side by side before the window of the Milan smoke-room—Ambrose Lavendale, the American, and his friend Captain Merrill from the War Office. Directly opposite to them was a narrow street running down to the Embankment, at the foot of which they could catch a glimpse of the river. A little to the left was a dark and melancholy building with a number of sightless windows.

      'Wonder what sort of people live in that place?' Merrill asked curiously. 'Milan Mansions they call it, don't they?'

      The other nodded.

      'Gloomy sort of barracks,' he remarked. 'I've never seen even a face at the window.'

      'There's a new experience for you, then,' Merrill observed, pointing a little forward—'a girl's face, too.'

      Lavendale was stonily silent, yet when the momentarily raised curtain had fallen he gave a little gasp. It could have been no hallucination. The face, transfigured though it was, in a sense, by its air of furtiveness, was, without a doubt, the face of the girl who had been constantly in his thoughts for the last three weeks. He counted the windows carefully from the ground, noted the exact position of the room and passed his arm through his friend's.

      'Come along, Reggie,' he said.

      'Where to?'

      'Don't ask any questions,' Lavendale begged. 'Just wait.'

      They left the hotel by an unfrequented way, Lavendale half a dozen paces ahead. Merrill ventured upon a mild protest.

      'Look here, old chap,' he complained, 'you might tell me where we are off to?'

      Lavendale slackened his speed for a moment to explain.

      'To that room,' he declared. 'Didn't you recognize the girl's face?'

      Merrill shook his head.

      'I scarcely noticed it.'

      'It was the girl whom we found unconscious, half poisoned by that fellow Hurn's diabolical invention,' Lavendale explained. 'She wasn't there by accident, either. I caught her listening in the Milan Grill-room when Hurn was talking to me, and the day after the inquest she disappeared.'

      Merrill laid a hand upon his friend's arm.

      'Even if this is so, Lavendale,' he expostulated, 'she probably doesn't want us bothering over here. What are you going to say to her? Pretty sort of asses we shall look if we blunder in upon her like this.'

      Lavendale continued to climb the stairs. By this time they had reached the second landing.

      'If you feel that way about it, Merrill,' he said, 'you can wait for me—or clear out altogether, if you like. I want to have a few words with this young lady, and I am going to have them.'

      Merrill sighed.

      'I'll see you through it, Ambrose,' he grumbled. 'All the same, I'm not at all sure that we are not making fools of ourselves.'

      They mounted yet another flight. A crazy lift went lumbering past them up to the top of the building. Lavendale paused outside a door near the end of the passage.

      'This should be the one,' he announced.

      He rang a bell. They could hear it pealing inside, but there was no response. Once more he pressed the button. This time it seemed to them both that its shrill summons was ringing through empty spaces. There was no sound of any movement within. The door of the next flat, however, opened. A tall, rather stout man, very untidily dressed, with pale, unwholesome face and a mass of ill-arranged hair, looked out.

      'Sir,' he said, 'it is no use ringing that bell. The only purpose you serve is to disturb me at my labours. The flat is empty.'

      'Are you quite sure about that?' Lavendale asked.

      'Absolutely!'

      'How was it, then, that I saw a face at one of the windows a quarter of an hour ago?' Lavendale demanded.

      'You are mistaken, sir,' was the grim reply. 'The thing is impossible. The porter who has the letting of the flat is only on duty in the afternoon, and, as a special favour to the proprietors, I have the keys here.'

      'Then with your permission I will borrow them,' Lavendale observed. 'I am looking for rooms in this neighbourhood.'

      The man bowed and threw open the door.

      'Come in, sir,' he invited pompously. 'I will fetch the keys for you. My secretary,' he added, with a little wave of his hand, pointing to a florid, over-buxom and untidy-looking woman who was struggling with an ancient typewriter. 'You find me hard at work trying to finish a play I have been commissioned to write for my friend Tree. You are aware, perhaps, of my—er—identity?'

      'I am sorry,' Lavendale replied. 'You see, I am an American, not a Londoner.'

      'That,' the other declared, 'accounts for it. My name is Somers-Keyne—Hamilton Somers-Keyne. My work, I trust, is more familiar to you than my personality?'

      'Naturally,' Lavendale assented, a little vaguely.

      The dramatist, who had been searching upon a mantelpiece which seemed littered with cigarette ends, scraps of letters and an empty tumbler or so, suddenly turned around with the key in his hand.

      'It is here,' he pronounced. 'Examine the rooms for yourself, Mr.——?'

      'Lavendale.'

      'Mr. Lavendale. They are furnished, I believe, but as regards the rent I know nothing except that the myrmidon who collects it is unpleasantly persistent in his attentions. If you will return the key to me, sir, when you have finished, I shall be obliged.'

      'Certainly,' Lavendale promised.

      The two young men opened the door and explored a dusty, barely-furnished, gloomy, conventional little suite, consisting of a single bedroom, a boxlike sitting-room, and a bathroom in the last stages of dilapidation. The rooms were undoubtedly empty, nor was there anywhere any sign of recent habitation. Lavendale stood at the window, leaned over and counted. When he drew back his face was more than ever puzzled. He looked once more searchingly around the unprepossessing rooms.

      'This was the window, Reggie,' he insisted.

      Merrill had lost interest in the affair and did not hesitate to show it.

      'Seems to me you must have counted wrongly,' he declared. 'In any case, there's no one here now, and it's quite certain that no one has been in during the last hour or so.'

      Lavendale said nothing for a moment. He examined the flat once more carefully, locked it up, and took the

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