to leave the Tankerton air."

"Thank you," said the rector, almost with fervor. "Thank you."

So, the next morning, Mr. Harding went away in the hired motor, and
Malling found himself alone in the red doll's house.

He was not sorry. The rector's revelation on the previous night had well
repaid him for his journey; then the air of Tankerton really rejoiced
him; and he would have speech of the professor.

"I shall lay it before Stepton," he had said to Mr. Harding the previous
night, after they had parted from the professor.

And he had spoken with authority. Mr. Harding's confidence, his
self-abasement, and his almost despairing appeal, had surely given
Malling certain rights. He intended to use them to the full. The
rector's abrupt relapse into reserve, his pitiful return to subterfuge,
after the receipt of that hypnotizing telegram, had not, in Malling's
view, abrogated those rights.

When the motor disappeared, he strolled across the grass with a towel
and had a dip in the brown sea, going in off the long shoal that the
Whitstable and Tankerton folk call "the Street." Then he set out to
find the professor.

His interview with Stepton on the previous night in the presence of
Mr. Harding had been rather brief. Stepton had been preoccupied and
monosyllabic. Agnes had been right as to his reason for honoring the
coast of Kent with his company, but wrong as to the haunted house's
location. It was not in Birchington, but lay inland, within easy reach
of Tankerton. When he met Malling and Harding, the professor was going
to his hotel, where a motor was waiting to convey him to the house, in
which he intended to pass the night. His mind was fixed tenaciously upon
the matter in hand. Malling had realized at once that it was not the
moment to disturb him by the introduction of any other affair, however
interesting. But his suggestion of a meeting the next morning was thus
welcomed:

"Right! I shall be at home at churchtime--as you're not preaching."

The second half of the sentence was directed to Mr. Harding, who said
nothing.

"And you might give me a cup of tea in the afternoon," the professor
had added, looking at the rector rather narrowly before shambling off
to his hotel to get the plaid shawl which he often wore at night.

"With the greatest pleasure. Minors is the name of the house," had been
Mr. Harding's reply.

Whereupon the professor had vanished, muttering to himself:

"Minors! And why not Majors