didn't say a word about where he was going. He went out just before
dusk, as if for a walk. I'd no idea that he wasn't at home until Sunday
morning. You see, the servants and I went to bed at our usual time on
Saturday night, and though he wasn't in then, I thought nothing of it,
because, of course, he'd his latch-key. He was often out late at night,
as you know, Mr. Neale. And when I found that he hadn't come back, as I
did find out before breakfast yesterday, I thought nothing of that
either--I thought he'd gone to see some friend or other, and had been
persuaded to stop the night. Then, when he didn't come home yesterday at
all, I thought he was staying the week-end somewhere. So I wasn't
anxious, nor surprised. But I am surprised he's not back here first
thing this morning."

"So am I," agreed Neale. "And more than surprised." He stood for a
moment, running over the list of the manager's friends and acquaintances
in the neighbourhood, and he shook his head as he came to the end of his
mental reckoning of it. "It's very odd," he remarked. "Very surprising,
Mrs. Carswell."

"It's all the more surprising," remarked the housekeeper, "because of
his going off for his holiday tomorrow. And Miss Fosdyke's coming down
from London today to go with him."

Neale pricked his ears. Miss Fosdyke was the manager's niece--a young
lady whom Neale remembered as a mere slip of a girl that he had met
years before and never seen since.

"I didn't know that," he remarked.

"Neither did Mr. Horbury until Saturday afternoon--that is, for
certain," said Mrs. Carswell. "He'd asked her to go with him to Scotland
on this holiday, but it wasn't settled. However, he got a wire from her,
about tea-time on Saturday, to say she'd go, and would be down here
today. They're to start tomorrow morning."

Neale turned to the door. He was distinctly puzzled and uneasy. He had
known John Horbury since his own childhood, and had always regarded him
as the personification of everything that was precise, systematic, and
regular. All things considered, it was most remarkable that he should
not be at the bank at opening hours. And already a vague suspicion that
something had happened began to steal into his mind.

"Did you happen to notice which way he went, Mrs. Carswell?" he asked.
"Was it towards the station?"

"He went out down the garden and through the orchard," replied the
housekeeper. "He could have got to the station that way, of course. But