ey positively are not, sir," replied the butler. "They
were kept in a certain safe in a small room used by Lady Carstairs as her
boudoir. Her ladyship left very hastily and secretly yesterday, as I
understand the police have told you, and, in her haste, she forgot to
lock up that safe--which she had no doubt unlocked before her departure.
That safe, sir, is empty--of those things, at any rate."

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Portlethorpe, greatly agitated. "This
is really terrible!"

"Could she carry those things--all of them--on her bicycle--by which I
hear she left?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"Easily, sir," replied Hollins. "She had a small luggage-carrier on her
bicycle--it would hold all those things. They were not bulky, of course."

"You've no idea where she went on that bicycle?" inquired Mr. Lindsey.

Hollins smiled cunningly, and drew his chair a little nearer to us.

"I hadn't--when I went to Mr. Murray, at the police-station, this
morning," he answered. "But--I've an idea, now. That's precisely why I
came in to see you, Mr. Lindsey."

He put his hand inside his overcoat and produced a pocket-book, from
which he presently drew out a scrap of paper.

"After I'd seen Mr. Murray this morning," he continued, "I went back to
Hathercleugh, and took it upon myself to have a look round. I didn't find
anything of a remarkably suspicious nature until this afternoon, pretty
late, when I made the discovery about the safe in the boudoir--that all
the articles I'd mentioned had disappeared. Then I began to examine a
waste-paper basket in the boudoir--I'd personally seen Lady Carstairs
tear up some letters which she received yesterday morning by the first
post, and throw the scraps into that basket, which hadn't been emptied
since. And I found this, gentlemen--and you can, perhaps, draw some
conclusion from it--I've had no difficulty in drawing one myself."

He laid on the table a torn scrap of paper, over which all three of us at
once bent. There was no more on it than the terminations of lines--but
the wording was certainly suggestive:--

".... at once, quietly
.... best time would be before lunch
.... at Kelso
.... usual place in Glasgow."

Mr. Portlethorpe started at sight of the handwriting.

"That's Sir Gilbert's!" he exclaimed. "No doubt of that. What are we to
understand by it, Lindsey?"

"What do you make of this?" asked Mr. Lindsey, turning to Hollins. "You
say you've drawn a deduction?"

"I make t