rry Brooks?" asked Captain Branscome, stepping back
and feeling for his gold-rimmed glasses. But by some chance he was
not wearing them. After fumbling for a moment, he gazed up towards
the window, blinking. Folk who habitually wear glasses look
unnatural without them. Captain Branscome's face looked unnatural
somehow. It was pale, and for the moment it seemed to me to be
almost a face of fright; but a moment later I set down its pallor to
weariness.

"Mrs. Stimcoe has gone off to the doctor," said I, "and Mr. Stimcoe
is sick, and I am up here nursing him. There is no one to open, but
you can give me a message."

"I just came up to make sure you were all right."

"If you mean Stim--Mr. Stimcoe, he's better, though the doctor says
he won't be able to leave his bed for days. How did you come to hear
about it?"

"I've heard nothing about Mr. Stimcoe," answered Captain Branscome,
after a hesitating pause. "I've been away--on a holiday. Nothing
wrong with you at all?" he asked.

I could not understand Captain Branscome. Why on earth should he be
troubling himself about my state of health?

"Nothing happened to upset you?" he asked.

I looked down at him sharply. As a matter of fact, and as the reader
knows, a great deal had happened to upset me, but that any hint of it
should have reached Captain Branscome was in the highest degree
unlikely, and in any case I could not discuss it with him from an
upstairs window and in my patient's hearing. So I contented myself
with asking him where he had spent his holiday.

The question appeared to confuse him. He averted his eyes and,
gazing out over the harbour, muttered--or seemed to mutter, for I
could not catch the answer distinctly--that he had been visiting some
friends; and so for a moment or two we waited at a deadlock. Indeed,
there is no knowing how long it might have lasted--for Captain
Branscome made no sign of turning again and facing me--but, happening
just then to glance along the terrace, I caught sight of Mrs. Stimcoe
returning with long, masculine strides.

She held an open letter in her hand, and was perusing it as she came.

"It's for you," she announced, coming to a standstill under the
window and speaking up to me after a curt nod towards Captain
Branscome--"from Miss Plinlimmon; and you'd best come down and hear
what it says, for it's serious."

I should here explain that Mr. and Mrs. Stimcoe made a practice of
reading all letters recei