hings over last night, that I had something which, so the
Watsons used to tell me, was round my neck when I first came to them.
It's a bit of gold ornament, with a motto on it. I've had it carefully
locked away for many a long year!"

He took out of his package a heart-shaped pendant, with a much-worn gold
chain attached to it, and turned it over to show an engraved inscription
on the reverse side.

"There's the motto," he said. "You see--_Who Will, Shall_. Whose is it?"

"God bless us!" exclaimed Mr. Portlethorpe. "The Carstairs motto!
Aye!--their motto for many a hundred years! Lindsey, this is an
extraordinary thing!--I'm inclined to think you may have some right in
your notions. We must--"

But before Mr. Portlethorpe could say what they must do, there was a
diversion in our proceedings which took all interest in them clean away
from me, and made me forget whatever mystery there was about Carstairs,
Smeaton, or anybody else. A page lad came along with a telegram in his
hand asking was there any gentleman there of the name of Moneylaws? I
took the envelope from him in a whirl of wonder, and tore it open,
feeling an unaccountable sense of coming trouble. And in another minute
the room was spinning round me; but the wording of the telegram was
clear enough:

"Come home first train Maisie Dunlop been unaccountably missing since
last evening and no trace of her. Murray."

I flung the bit of paper on the table before the other three, and,
feeling like my head was on fire, was out of the room and the hotel, and
in the street and racing into the station, before one of them could find
a word to put on his tongue.

CHAPTER XXXI

NO TRACE

That telegram had swept all the doings of the morning clear away from me.
Little I cared about the Carstairs affairs and all the mystery that was
wrapping round them in comparison with the news which Murray had sent
along in that peculiarly distressing fashion! I would cheerfully have
given all I ever hoped to be worth if he had only added more news; but he
had just said enough to make me feel as if I should go mad unless I could
get home there and then. I had not seen Maisie since she and my mother
had left Mr. Lindsey and me at Dundee--I had been so fully engaged since
then, what with the police, and Mrs. Ralston, and Mr. Portlethorpe, and
the hurried journeys, first to Newcastle and then to Edinburgh, that I
had never had a minute to run down and see how things were goi