Chapter XXXII: In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend Harry to pay a visit

Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead,
October 21st, 1905.

Dear Harry,--I have no telegram from you this morning, and am remaining here. Be good enough to wire upon receipt of this to say if you would sooner have me in Paris or London--for ’tis little I care where, so long as I may be of service to you.

Your letter to the daily papers has done a power of good. I had no idea that any friend of mine could write with so much feeling and good sense, and I congratulate you upon it. The town, I am told, continues to talk of little else--but you have given the affair a new turn, and the newspaper editors have more than they can do with the letters that come to them.

Now, my boy, I am going to speak very plainly to you. Had you asked me a month ago whether you should go to Madame Lea’s house, I would have turned my back upon you for the question, and put it out of your power to ask me another for many a long day.

But this is not my advice this morning. There is something lying at the back of my head which may be common sense or may be a fool’s burden; but it is crying to me all the time that a woman may be the heart of this mystery, and to a woman you may well go for that news which no man is able to give you.

I say, go to this Lea d’Alençon and hear what she has to tell you. When your dear wife is found, ’twill be Paddy O’Connell who will make his advice good and relieve you of the burden of it. Go to her, and ask her plainly what is the meaning of the postscript to her letter. She’ll tell you in five minutes. There never yet was a woman born who could keep good or bad news from the man who meant to have it from her.

I shall say no more, lest I should put thoughts into your mind and inspire you with a hope that has no justification in the facts. One thing I do ask you to believe, and it is this: that if your wife is alive and well, and I believe her to be both, we shall have a message from her before many days have run. ’Tis a poor sort of a house which can keep a clever woman from speaking out of its windows when she has the mind to be eloquent--and Mimi is no singing bird to be content with a spoonful of canary seed. We shall hear from her, I say, and the news will be good news. So go to visit Madame with a light heart--and be sure you carry yourself well before her--for a woman tells little to a coward, and this lady may have much to tell.

I would have you to know that your cousin Martha stands with me in this opinion, and is all for your going to Madame Lea. “’Tis a woman’s story,” says she, “and a woman must tell it.” I find the little body mightily concerned about the whole business, and as full of ideas as a pod of peas. She has been to Hampstead almost every day since I was here, and we have ransacked your home together for the clues we did not discover. A livelier companion I would never wish to find, and, being Arthur’s wife, I forgive her much--even her calling me a fool for wanting to put an advertisement in the papers advising Mimi that you are in Paris.

As for Cousin Arthur, there’s a man that has found some heart at last. I’ll do him the justice to believe that his sympathy is gratis, and not a return for the seven thousand a year of your money which he hopes to get in the springtime, and thereafter to preach the Sermon on the Mount from the neighbourhood of Park-lane. I have here by me, as I write, a copy of Taylor’s “Holy Living” and a new edition of Smiles’ “Self Help,” which he has just sent down to you. There is also a slip of texts underlined, with which I take leave not to trouble you. It is well meant, and it would be sinful for us to mock him because he wears a Roman collar and is a little less human than the rest of us.

Don’t fail to let me have the news. The best part of my own is told by the newspapers before I can breathe a word of it. They have made a profitable business of this mystery, and there is not a drawing-room, a club, or a kitchen which does not discuss it every day and all the days. For you, yourself, I find the warmest sympathy--and it is possible that you have already done something to earn the same for your dear wife. God bless her, wherever she is, and send her back to us before our hearts are broken.--Your friend,

Paddy O’Connell.

P.S.--I have just sent a telegram to an editor man asking him what the devil he means by an article in his paper this morning suggesting that Mimi is shielding somebody, and that’s why the police cannot trace her. It is necessary to be discreet and patient, but if he doesn’t contradict it to-morrow, I’ll go down and break every bone in his body, just to show my good opinion of him.