ticed.
Will you wire round to the different telegraph offices and ask if
anything of the kind has been seen or heard of?"

"They cannot have gone more than a hundred miles since midnight, can
they?" Johnson asked.

"A hundred? No, not fifty," Allnut exclaimed.

"Well, we'll say a hundred. I'll wire to every telegraph office within a
hundred miles. I'll send or bring you word within half an hour."

"Supposing there is any truth in the yarn," Soden remarked slowly, "how
is it going to help? I brought the men along, not because I believed
their yarn, but because it seemed to me they might know more about the
robbery than they would care to have known."

"There's no harm in sending off those telegrams, anyway. I'll get away
and put them through," Johnson said as he went to the door.

He stood for a moment looking out along the road.

"I fancy that's Mrs. Burke coming," he called back over his shoulder to
Eustace.

Soden, Allnut, and Brennan, at the mention of the name, moved towards
the door, and Harding came round the counter to join them.

"You had better see her, Harding," Eustace said under his breath. "Tell
her everything will be all right so far as she is concerned. We cannot
say more until we hear from head office."

The other three men were already out on the footpath in front of the
bank entrance. Eustace slipped into the little ante-room that served as
the manager's private office, as the sound of a vehicle pulling up
outside the bank reached him.

CHAPTER III

DISAPPEARED

"Oh, never mind," Mrs. Burke exclaimed as Brennan went to the horse's
head and took hold of the reins. "Sure I'm only stopping for a moment--I
won't get out. It's just to see Mr. Eustace I've come."

The men on the footpath looked at one another and then at her.

In the doorway Harding stood hesitating whether to go out or to wait
until Mrs. Burke alighted from the buggy.

"You've heard the news, haven't you?" Allnut asked as he stepped to her
side. "Ill news travels apace, they say. Hasn't word got out as far as
the Downs?"

Mrs. Burke turned the full battery of her dark-fringed eyes on the
storekeeper.

"News? What news?" she exclaimed. "I've only just come in. Has anything
happened?"

She glanced at Harding where he stood in the doorway.

"To Mr. Eustace? Nothing has happened to Mr. Eustace, has there?" she
added, as she leaned towards Allnut.

"Well, I don't know," he replied in an uncertain voice. "It af