is wife.
He said, reflecting wildly, that she was not very tall and rather plump;
dark hair. Dress? Dark blue. Hat and mantle? He could not say. Age? A
queer impulse here. He knew that she hated the mention of her real age,
and so he said thirty-nine. No! The police had no news of such a person.
But the polite firm voice on the wire said that it would telephone to
other stations and would let Mr. Prohack hear immediately if there was
anything to communicate. Wonderful organisation, the London police
force!

As he hung up the receiver he realised what had occurred and what he had
done. Marian had mysteriously disappeared and he had informed the
police,--he, Arthur Prohack, C.B. What an awful event!

His mind ran on the consequences of traumatic neurasthenia. He put on
his hat and overcoat and unbolted the front-door as silently as he
could--for he still did not want anybody in the house to know the
secret--and went out into the street. What to do? A ridiculous move! Did
he expect to find her lying in the gutter? He walked to the end of the
dark street and peered into the cross-street, and returned. He had left
the front-door open. As he re-entered the house he descried in a corner
of the hall, a screwed-up telegraph-envelope. Why had he not noticed it
before? He snatched at it. It was addressed to "Mrs. Prohack."

Mr. Prohack's soul was instantaneously bathed in heavenly solace.
Traumatic neurasthenia had nothing to do with Eve's disappearance! His
bliss was intensified by the fact that he had said not a word to the
servants and had not called Sissie. And it was somewhat impaired by the
other fact that he had been ass enough to tell the police. He was just
puzzling his head to think what misfortune could have called his wife
away--not that the prospect of any misfortune much troubled him now that
Eve's vanishing was explained--when through the doorway he saw a taxi
drive up. Eve emerged from the taxi.

II

He might have gone out and paid the fare for her, but he stayed where he
was, in the doorway, thinking with beatific relief that after all
nothing had "happened" in the family.

"Ah!" he said, in the most ordinary, complacent, quite undisturbed
tone, "I was just beginning to wonder where you'd got to. We've been
back about five minutes, Sissie and I, and Sissie's gone to bed. I
really don't believe she knows you were out."

Mrs. Prohack came urgently towards him, pushing the door to behind her
with a car