uble you--do you know that the
housekeeper, Mrs. Carswell, has disappeared? You heard what that girl
said this morning? Well, she hasn't come back, and----"

"No concern of mine, Mr. Police-Superintendent!" interrupted Gabriel.
"Nothing of this is any concern of mine. I shall be obliged to you if
you'll confine your very unnecessary operations to the interior of the
house, and not stand about this outer hall, or keep this door open
between outer and inner halls--I don't want my customers interfered
with as they come and go."

With that the senior partner passed on, and Starmidge smiled at his
companion.

"I'm glad he interrupted you, all the same, Mr. Polke," he said. "I was
afraid you were going to say that you knew this woman had gone, in a
hurry, to Ecclesborough."

"No, I wasn't," replied Polke. "I told him what I did--because I wanted
to know what he'd say."

"Well--you heard!" said Starmidge. "And what's to be done, now? That
woman's conduct is very suspicious. I think, if I were you, Mr. Polke, I
should get in touch with the Ecclesborough police. Why not? No harm
done. Why not call them up, give them a description of her, and ask them
to keep their eyes open. She mayn't have left Ecclesborough--mayn't
intend leaving. For--look here--!" he drew Polke further away from the
two doors between which they were standing, and lowered his voice to a
whisper--"Supposing," he went on, "supposing there is any secret
understanding between this Mrs. Carswell and Joseph Chestermarke (and it
looks like it, if she went off immediately after a conversation with
him), she may have gone to Ecclesborough simply so that they could meet
there, safely, later on. Eh?"

"Good notion!" agreed Polke. "Well--we can watch him."

"I'm beginning to think we must watch him--thought so for the last two
hours," said Starmidge. "But in the meantime, why not put the
Ecclesborough police on to keeping their eyes open for her? Can you
give them a good description?"

"Know her as well as I know my own wife--by sight," answered Polke. "And
her style of dressing, too. All right--I'll go and do it, now. Well,
there'll be Mr. Batterley coming along in a few minutes--Jones has gone
for him. If he can show you any of their secret places he talked
about----"

"He's here," said Starmidge, as the old antiquary and the constable
entered the hall. "All right--I'll attend to him."

But when Polke had gone, and Batterley had been conducted into the
st