not searched. It took him barely five minutes to
discover--nothing. With an air of relief he rearranged everything.
When Philippa returned, he was sitting on the lounge, going through the
charts which they had looked out together.

"Well?" she asked.

"There is nothing here," he decided, "which will help me very much. With
your permission I will take this," he added, selecting one at random.

She nodded and they replaced the others. Then she touched him on the
arm.

"Listen," she said, "are you perfectly certain that there is no one
coming?"

He listened for a moment.

"I can't hear any one," he answered. "They've started a four-handed game
of pool in the billiard room."

She smiled.

"Then I will disclose to you Henry's dramatic secret. See!"

She touched the spring in the side of the secretary. The false back,
with its little collection of fishing flies, rolled slowly up. The large
and very wonderful chart on which Sir Henry had bestowed so much of his
time, was revealed. Lessingham gazed at it eagerly.

"There!" she said. "That has been a great labour of love with Henry.
It is the chart, on a great scale, from which he works. I don't know
a thing about it, and for heaven's sake never tell Henry that you have
seen it."

He continued to examine the chart earnestly. Not a part of it escaped
him. Then he turned back to Philippa.

"Is that supposed to be the coast on the other side of the point?" he
asked.

"I don't exactly know where it is," she replied. "Every time Henry finds
out anything new, he comes and works at it. I believe that very soon it
will be perfect. Then he will start on another part of the coast."

"This is not the only one that he has prepared, then?" Lessingham
enquired.

She shook her head.

"I believe it is the fifth," she replied. "They all disappear when they
are finished, but I have no idea where to. To me they seem to represent
a shocking waste of time."

Lessingham was suddenly taciturn. He held out his hand. "You are dining
with us to-morrow night, remember," she said.

"I am not likely to forget," he assured her.

"And don't get drowned," she concluded. "I don't know any of these
fishermen--I hate them all--but I'm told that Oates is the worst."

"I think that we shall be quite all right," he assured her. "Thanks very
much for finding me the charts. What I have seen will help me."

Helen came in for a moment and their farewell was more or less
perfunctory. Lessing