esignation.

Whilst Department Z. hummed and buzzed with energy, and men and women
were coming and going continuously, Dorothy sat at the window of John
Dene's room gazing out at a prospect of white enamelled bricks
punctuated by windows. She had nothing to do. Everything seemed so
different. John Dene's impulsive energy had vitalised all about him.
Now she felt as if all her faculties had suddenly wilted.

In her own mind she was convinced that he was ill. She could not blot
from her mind the strangeness of his manner during the last few days.
His sudden loss of memory proved that he was unwell. For a man to
forget where the postage stamps are kept, or the position in the room
of the letter files, was, in itself, a proof that something very
strange had suddenly come over him, the more so in the case of one who
was almost aggressively proud of his memory. Then there had been other
little details. His movements did not seem the same, that jerkiness
and sudden upward glance from his table had disappeared. It was as if
he had been drugged. Dorothy wondered if that really were the
explanation. Oh! but she was very miserable and horribly lonely.

That night Dorothy and her mother sat up long after midnight talking of
John Dene. To both had come the realisation that he stood to them in
the light of an intimate friend.

As she said "Good night," Mrs. West put her arm round Dorothy's
shoulders, and in a shaky voice said:

"I don't think God would let anything happen to a good man like Mr.
Dene;" and Dorothy turned and left the room abruptly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HUE AND CRY

The late editions of the evening papers contained no mention of the
disappearance of John Dene. For one thing much valuable time had been
lost owing to the attitude of Sir Lyster Grayne, for another, Malcolm
Sage had decided to make a great display in the morning papers. All
that afternoon Department Z. was feverishly busy. Photographs of John
Dene had to be duplicated, and the story distributed through the Press
Bureau, in order that it might possess an official character.

On the morning following the discovery of John Dene's disappearance,
the British public was startled at its breakfast-table by an offer of
L10,000 reward for details that would lead to the discovery of the
whereabouts of one John Dene, a citizen of Toronto, Canada, who had
last been seen at 6 p.m. on the previous Monday outside his offices in
Waterloo Place.