bring Jimmy to his senses. For
the present, however, Sybil tried to hope that there might be more
difficulty in running his quarry to earth than he anticipated. She
might indeed be hiding somewhere perplexingly close at hand; and most
likely Mark held the clue!

Jimmy lost no time in setting to work in earnest. In the first place,
he inserted advertisements in the halfpenny evening papers and such of
their morning contemporaries as made a special feature of betting news.
These he thought would be most in favour amongst taxi-cab drivers, and,
of course, the important thing was to discover the man who had driven
"a lady and her luggage from No. 5, Golfney Place" that fateful
afternoon.

Not content with this, Jimmy motored to Sandbay, and stopping at a
stationer's shop, succeeded in purchasing a local Directory. In this
he found the name of "Dobson, the Misses," who lived at No. 8, Downside
Road. The house was named "Fairbank." Thither Jimmy drove at once,
and few thoroughfares could have had a more sedately retired
appearance. A wide, gravelled roadway, smoothly rolled, with red-brick
villas all precisely alike on one side, and yellow-brick villas,
equally uniform, on the other.

There must have been fewer than the average number of children in the
neighbourhood, and these must have been unusually silent and well
conducted. Such dogs as there were always went out with a lead, and
often wearing neat little home-made coats, with a leather strap instead
of a collar.

On almost every gate a metal label was affixed: "No hawkers or street
musicians." In the most sedate of the red-brick villas with the
neatest front garden, lived the Misses Dobson. If any one ever
ventured to speak of them in their hearing as the "Miss Dobsons" he was
certain to be corrected. In truth, "The Misses Dobson" seemed to
describe them far more accurately.

The difference between their ages was only eighteen months, and casual
observers assumed that they were twins. They invariably dressed alike,
in a fashion which had become out of date in London several years
before. They never went out separately, and in order that the same
ideas should penetrate their minds at the same moment, one of the pair
read aloud while the other sewed and listened.

Well-to-do in the world, they were exceedingly kind to the poor, and
they had never succeeded in grasping Bridget's reasons for refusing to
accept their hospitality. This afternoon they wer