The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

fondly attached--too attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and always carried them about with her.

A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange change, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.""What has happened to her, then?""Ah, what has happened to the Lady Frances?

Is she alive or dead? There is our problem. She is a lady of precise habits, and for four years it has been her invariable custom to write every second week to Miss Dobney, her old governess, who has long retired and lives in Camberwell.

It is this Miss Dobney who has consulted me. Nearly five weeks have passed without a word. The last letter was from the Hotel National at Lausanne.

Lady Frances seems to have left there and given no address.

The family are anxious, and as they are exceedingly wealthy no sum will be spared if we can clear the matter up.""Is Miss Dobney the only source of information?

Surely she had other correspondents?""There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson.

That is the bank. Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries.

She banks at Silvester's. I have glanced over her account. The last check but one paid her bill at Lausanne, but it was a large one and probably left her with cash in hand.

Only one check has been drawn since.""To whom, and where?""To Miss Marie Devine.

There is nothing to show where the check was drawn. It was cashed at the Credit Lyonnais at Montpellier less than three weeks ago.

The sum was fifty pounds.""And who is Miss Marie Devine?""That also I have been able to discover.

Miss Marie Devine was the maid of Lady Frances Carfax.

Why she should have paid her this check we have not yet determined.

I have no doubt, however, that your researches will soon clear the matter up."6"MY researches!""Hence the health-giving expedition to Lausanne.

You know that I cannot possibly leave London while old Abrahams is in such mortal terror of his life.

Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country.

Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the Continental wire.