The Safety Pin | Page 2

she was smartly dressed; she was a stranger. He wondered about her without knowing why he wondered: then, as he saw her look round again, hesitate, and suddenly cross the street in his direction, he formulated a theory.
"She's in some perplexity," mused Shelmore. "Wants to know something."
The girl disappeared from view amongst the folk on the sidewalk, and Shelmore, the last finger of his gloves being adjusted, picked up the neatly rolled umbrella and the equally neatly folded Times, and prepared to quit the scene of his daily labour. But before he had opened the green baize door, he heard voices in the clerk's room. He paused: the green baize door opened, and Simmons Hackdale's sharp-eyed face appeared, and his hand held out a card.
"Young lady," said Simmons, laconically. "Wants to consult you."
Shelmore took the card mechanically and stared at the neat script. Of course this was the girl he had just seen from his window. And this that he was staring at would be her name--Miss Cynthia Pretty, St. Meliot's, Camborne. Camborne! Why, Camborne was a good two or three hundred miles away, in Cornwall! What...he suddenly looked up, nodded at his clerk, and, drawing off his gloves and removing his hat, turned to his desk, as to a refuge. But being there again, his eyes went to the door...
He got a general impression of Miss Cynthia Pretty as Simmons Hackdale showed her in. She was tallish, and she was slim and willowy, as he had thought at first, and she was undeniably attractive. He was not sure whether her hair was gold--deep gold--or whether it weren't a bit reddish; he was uncertain, too, about her eyes, whether they were blue or whether they were violet--anyway, the lot of her, put together, lighted up the office. And she was young--perhaps nineteen, perhaps twenty; he couldn't tell; certainly she was very young. And suddenly he felt very young--and a little small--himself. For at sight of him, Miss Cynthia Pretty let out an involuntary exclamation.
"Oh!" she said, pausing between the door and the desk. "Are--are you the Mr. Shelmore whose name is on the door downstairs. You are? Oh! Well, you look so awfully young to be a solicitor. And it's a solicitor I want."
"Perhaps I'm older than I look," answered Shelmore, recovering his wits. "And I assure you I'm very wise! Will you sit down and tell me--"
His client dropped into the easy chair to which he pointed, and let her hands fall together in her lap. She gave him another critical inspection.
"You look a bit clever," she said. "And anyway, you're a man and a lawyer, and that's what I want. I'm in a mess, Mr. Shelmore!--at least, I don't know what to do. As you see from my card, my name's Pretty--Cynthia Pretty. I live near Camborne, in Cornwall. I'm half-proprietor of a famous tin mine there. The other half belongs to my partner, Mr. James Deane. Mr. Deane is also my guardian and trustee and all that sort of thing, under my father's will, because, you see, I'm not yet of age--I'm only nineteen. I'm telling you this as a sort of preliminary to the really important business. Well, that's just this--Mr. Deane and I have lately been travelling about. Not together--separately. He's been in the North of England--he's fond of old places, antiquities and so on. I've been staying with an old school friend at Bath. Mr. Deane and I arranged to meet here, at the Chancellor Hotel, Southernstowe, today--this afternoon, to be exact. We were to stay here a few days, to look round; then we were going on to Dover, and to the continent--Holland and Belgium, and perhaps Germany. Well, I got here, not half-an-hour ago, from Bath, with all my luggage, and drove straight to the Chancellor. They'd got a room booked for me right enough--Mr. Deane booked it when he arrived here on Monday--that's the day before yesterday. But Mr. Deane himself isn't there!--he's clean disappeared!"
"Disappeared!" exclaimed Shelmore. "How? Why?"
"Don't ask me," replied his caller. "I don't know! That's what the girl clerk in the office, across there, says. The landlord wasn't in, and I couldn't get much out of her--she isn't very brilliant or illuminating. But that's what she says--that Mr. Deane came there on Monday, some time, and disappeared mysteriously during Monday night, and they've never seen him since. And--and I thought I'd better consult somebody at once, and so I came out and looked about for a solicitor, and I saw your name, and--well, that's just where it is."
"How old is Mr. Deane?" asked Shelmore.
"Sixty-three last June," answered Miss Pretty. "Any reason why he should disappear?"
"Goodness, no! What reason should there be?"
"Not knowing him, I can't say. Any financial reasons?"
"Mr Deane is a wealthy man. He and I, as