"Ought not Oliver to be consulted?" I said.
"I'll go and fetch him," said Onslow.
He left the room and returned in a few moments, accompanied by Jim Oliver. The young soldier was quite alive to the difficulties of our position. The nervous distress, which yesterday so completely overpowered him, had now vanished.
He was intensely anxious, but he did not show undue agitation. We had a brief consultation, and then it was arranged that I should go back immediately to London and try to learn everything there was to be known about Nurse Collins. I had elicited one apparent fact from her yesterday, viz., that she had been trained as a nurse at Guy's Hospital. Accordingly, on the afternoon of that same day, I went to the hospital and set inquiries on foot with regard to her. The books were searched, and it was soon abundantly proved that no nurse of the name of Collins had ever been trained at that hospital.
"Then," I exclaimed, "the woman is not even a medical nurse. If she is really still with that poor girl, her wretched victim may be dead before we can rescue her."
The matron to whom I was speaking became interested, and presently asked me to describe the supposed nurse's appearance.
I did so, minutely.
"Light auburn hair," quoted the matron, "very light blue eyes and white eyelashes—a thin face. How old should you say the woman was, Dr. Halifax?"
"From five-and-twenty to thirty," I replied.
"About the middle height?"
"Yes, a slight person."
"Did she walk with the faintest suspicion of a limp—so very slight that it might be passed over without comment?"
Now it so happened that Nurse Collins did walk with a sort of swing, which had arrested my attention when I took her to my patient the evening before.
"I could scarcely call it a limp," I said, "but it is certainly true that the nurse's walk was a little peculiar."
"Then I know who she is," said the matron; "that description could scarcely fit two people. She was trained here, but not under the name of Collins. See—I will show you her name in the book. Nurse Cray—twenty-three years of age—auburn hair, light blue eyes, very slight limp. That nurse, Dr. Halifax, stayed with us exactly a year. She was an admirable and clever nurse. She left at the end of that time under peculiar circumstances."
"Do you mind telling me what they were?"
The matron hesitated.
"I don't wish to injure anyone," she said, after a pause; "but in this case it is right for you to have all possible information. Nurse Cray left here on suspicion of theft. A large sum of money had been left in her charge by a lady patient. This is quite an exceptional thing to do. When the lady was leaving, the money was not forthcoming. Nurse declared it had been stolen from her. The lady was not willing to prosecute, and the matter was dropped. But Cray left the next week, and we have not heard anything of her since. I believe her to be a dangerous woman, and I should be sorry to have any girl in her power."
This information I imparted in due course to my friends at Holmwood. In the meantime Onslow and Captain Oliver were leaving not a stone unturned to trace the two girls. The end of the second day arrived, however, without our having obtained the slightest clue to their whereabouts.
Poor Oliver was nearly wild with anxiety, and my own fears were very grave. I could not get Frances Wilton's face out of my mind. I saw it in my mind's eye, wherever I turned, or whatever I did. I wondered what the wretched girl's ultimate fate would be. There was little doubt that she was quickly reaching that stage when direct morphia poisoning begins. If she were really still in Collins's power, her days on earth were numbered.
Sitting by my fireside on the evening of the second day I thought of her with increased uneasiness. It was almost impossible to believe that two rather remarkable looking girls like Frances and Rosamond could disappear as it were bodily from the earth. Onslow and Oliver were both clever and keen-sighted men. We were employing the best private detective we knew to assist us, and yet up to the present we had not got the slightest clue to the whereabouts of the girls. I felt so anxious as I pondered over these things that I felt inclined to run down to Holmwood by the last train that evening. Before this thought, however, had taken the form of a resolution, there came a ring to my hall door, and the next moment my servant told me that a woman was waiting to see me.
"What is her name?" I asked.
"She refuses to give it, sir," replied the man. "She says she will not keep you long, but she earnestly begs of you to let her see you without delay."
