m again later: I am supposing that you went down the wharf and
came back, shall I say, in an hour's time. Did you see Absalom again?"

The clergyman stared out of the window, and his pause was of such
intensely long duration that when he said the one word, "No," it fell
like the splash of a stone dropped into a deep well.

Hartley looked at his sleeve-links for quite a long time.

"Good night, Heath," he said, getting up, but the Rev. Francis Heath
made no reply.

Hartley went back to his bungalow with something to think about. He had
always regarded Heath as a difficult and rather violently religious man.
They had never been friends, and he knew that they never could be
friends, but he respected the man even without liking him. Now he was
quite convinced that Heath, after some deliberation with his conscience,
had lied to him, and it made him angry. He had admitted, with the
greatest reluctance, that he had been through Paradise Street, and seen
the boy, and his declaration that he had not seen him again did not ring
with any real conviction. It made the whole question more interesting,
but it made it unpleasant. If things came to light that called the
inquiry into court, the Rev. Francis Heath might live to learn that the
law has a way of obliging men to speak. If Hartley had ever been sure of
anything in his life, he was sure that Heath knew something of Absalom,
and knew where he had gone in search of the gold lacquer bowl that was
desired by Mrs. Wilder. He made up his mind to see Mrs. Wilder and ask
her about the order for the bowl; but he hardly thought of her, his mind
was full of the mystery that attached itself to the question of the
Rector of St. Jude's parish, and his fierce and angry refusal to talk
reasonably.

He threw open his windows and sat with the air playing on his face, and
his thoughts circled round and round the central idea. Absalom was
missing, and the Rev. Francis Heath had behaved in a way that led him to
believe that he knew a great deal more than he cared to say, and Hartley
brooded over the subject until he grew drowsy and went upstairs to bed.

III

INDICATES A STANDPOINT COMMONLY SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE PRINCIPLES OF
THE JESUIT FATHERS

It was quite early the following morning when Hartley set out to take a
stroll down Paradise Street, and from there to the Chinese quarter,
where Leh Shin had a small shop in a colonnade running east and west.
The houses here were very