k, found Buck better, and
announced that they would return to England at once. They had packed
and started forthwith, and returned by the usual route.

"Did my father seem quite himself, just as usual in every way, Buck?"
asked Jack.

"No," said Buck thoughtfully. "He didn't quite. There was somethin' on
the Professor's mind, I'm sure o' that."

Jack put forward Mr. Buxton's suggestion, but Buck waved it aside.

"Touch o' the sun," said he. "Oh, no, nothin' like that. The
Professor was as fit as he always was, right as a bull-frog in a
swamp. No, it was a sort of anxiousness there was about him. He was
that careful that you might almost call him fidgetty."

"Fidgetty!" said Jack in surprise, as he remembered the perfectly
equable manner of his widely-travelled father.

"Yes, that's as good a word as any I can jump on at short notice,"
replied Buck. "He seemed as keen on getting back to London as some o'
these globetrotters who have got sick o' foreign parts."

"That was rather strange," commented Jack. "You've been with my father
twelve years now, Buck. Did you ever see him like it before?"

"Never in my knowledge of him," said Buck, shaking his head. "As a
general rule the Professor was as calm an' easy campin' in a jungle as
another man in a front seat at a circus. It was all one to the
Professor, let things come how they might. But this time he seemed as
if his only idea was to get back. Not that he said much about it. The
most I ever heard him say was, 'Well, Buck, I don't care how soon I
get into Lane & Baumann's office,' an' he only said that once when he
was fretted at losing a day by missing a boat at Rangoon."

At this moment the carriage drew up at the door of the hotel. They had
scarcely entered the door when the hotel clerk came forward with a
cablegram. It was from Messrs Lane & Baumann, asking if anything was
yet known of Mr. Haydon.

"If he was anxious to see them, they are just as anxious to see him,"
said Buck, handing the form to Jack. "Every day they wire, an'
sometimes twice a day, to know if I've got hold of any news."

"I wish I'd been to see them before I left London," said Jack. "I
might have got some useful information from them. What do you believe
has happened to my father?"

"I dunno what to think," said Risley, "except that some o' these
Dagoes got him in a corner and went for his pocket-book. He'd got
plenty of money with him."

"But if he'd been attacked by thieves," argued