rance. He left the hotel in a state of thoughtfulness,
fully realizing the difficulties of the task which lay before him in
tracing Sisily's movements on the previous night, and discovering where
she had flown. The deeper questions of motive and the inconsequence of
some of her actions he preferred to leave till later. Action, and not
mental analysis, was the need of the moment. Barrant prided himself on
being a man of action, and he was also a detective. The thrill of pursuit
stirred in his blood.

His later activities that night and the following day brought to light
many things, but not all that he wanted to know. He convinced himself, in
the first place, that it was possible for the girl to have left her room
and! returned to it on the night of her father's death without any of the
inmates of the hotel being aware of her absence. That lessened the
complexity of the case by absolving Mrs. Pendleton from the suspicion of
pretended ignorance. Barrant was also convinced the aunt believed her
niece to be in bed and asleep during the time of her own visit to her
brother's house. Sisily had to pass the office of the hotel in going out
and returning, but she could easily have done so unobserved. There were
few guests at that season of the year, and the proprietor's daughter, who
looked after the office, was in the dining-room having her dinner at
half-past seven. She went to bed shortly after ten, leaving the front
entrance in charge of the porter, who had duties to perform in various
parts of the house. And it was possible to descend the stairs and leave
the hotel without being seen from the lounge or smoking-room.

There was a wagonette to St. Fair from the railway station at
half-past-seven. The hotel dinner was at a quarter to seven for the
convenience of some permanent guests, and Sisily, who left the table
before the meal was concluded--about a quarter-past seven, according to
Mrs. Pendleton--had time to catch the wagonette. On the assumption that
even a Cornish wagonette would cover the journey of five miles across the
moors in less than an hour, Sisily had probably reached her father's house
at half-past eight or a little earlier. The stopped clock in the study
indicated that he met his death at half-past nine. If so, Sisily must have
left Flint House shortly before her aunt's arrival to catch the returning
wagonette at the cross-roads where the young woman was seen waiting by
Peter Portgartha.

But that plausibly