The Crystal Claw by William Le Queux

A week later I was engaged one morning dictating letters to my typist when Hensman rushed into my room, evidently in a state of great agitation.

"Can I speak to you for a moment? " he asked. He was pale and agitated.

At a sign from me the girl left the room. "What's wrong, old man? " I said.

"Have you seen the paper this morning? " he asked.

"No, not yet. Why?"

"Then you haven't seen this," he said, handing me his copy of the _Times_ which, as most solicitors do, he was in the habit of scanning before he began his day's work.

What I read staggered me. It was as follows:

MISSING LADY

"The police are actively in search of Mrs. Thelma Audley, aged 20, daughter of Mrs. Shaylor, widow of Lieutenant-Commander Cyril Shaylor, R. N., who left her home at Bexhill-on-Sea on the morning of the 18th inst. after the receipt of an urgent telegram calling her to London.

"She did not show the message to anyone, but its receipt apparently caused her great excitement, for she hurriedly packed a bag, telling her mother that she would be staying at the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria and would return next day.

"Nothing has since been seen or heard of her. She did not arrive at the hotel, and it is an open question whether she actually ever went to London.

"Inquiries show that she did not travel by the train she intended. But as there are two lines of railway from Bexhill to London the lady may have taken the second route, by a train leaving half-an-hour later, which brought a good many returning excursionists to London, so that she may easily have passed unnoticed.

"One curious feature of the case is that Mrs. Audley, on receipt of the telegram, apparently burned it by applying a match, as the tinder was found in the fireplace of her bedroom. Another most curious feature is that her mother Mrs. Shaylor received on the following day a telegram handed in at Waterloo Station, with the words, ‘_Am all right, do not worry. Back soon -- Thelma._'

"Mrs. Audley and her mother are well-known in Bexhill, where they have lived for two years. The young lady married early in the New Year, but her husband being called abroad, she has remained at home during the summer. Any information concerning the missing lady will be gladly received by her mother, and can be given to any police station. Her description which was circulated yesterday is as follows: -- "

Then followed a very minute description of Thelma, and of the clothes she wore when she left Bexhill.

Thelma had disappeared! Did that mysterious message emanate from her husband? Had she gone to join him in hiding?

Why had she been so careful to destroy that message which called her to London? If it were from Stanley, as I felt certain it was, then what more natural than that she would have told her mother and explained that she was rejoining him?

She was elated at receipt of the message! Why?

"This is even more amazing than the past events," I declared to Hensman when, at last I found my tongue. "What do you think of it?"

"I don't know what to think of it, old chap," was my partner's reply, "except that it makes the whole affair more mysterious than ever. It is quite clear she has disappeared of her own free will. Possibly she has some motive, as her husband undoubtedly had, for effacing himself, and I should think it quite possible she has gone to join him, wherever he is."