"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.

"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in disgrace over something."

The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth doing. Sylvia--like most _devotes_--could not believe in the existence of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other--and to tell me all about it.

"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.

"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I forget who won; he certainly had the note.

A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence.

Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last Commemoration.

"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced.

"House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."

"Who's paying?" asked Michael.

"Guv'nor, I hope."

"_Je_ ne _pense pas_," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.

"You come," Robin went on regardless of the interruption. "I've got six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."

"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University dancing costume, I believe it's called."

"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates from Carfax.

"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."

"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was unpinning a motor-veil.

"Oh, _yes_, darling Sylvia!" Robin--I know--was both fond and proud of his sister, but the tone of _ad hoc_ blandishment suggested that experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."

"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.

"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd you like?" he asked me.

"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to mischief."

Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just entered the room, and turned to his sister.

"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.

"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.

"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."

Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing up the drive, cutting all corners.

"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.

"Who?"

"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."

Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime Minister's sudden appearance.

"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."

"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.

"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."

We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's suggestion we began to retreat through the open French windows into the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had to be introduced afresh.

"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement towards the window. "You may be able to help us."

I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade, coming to Oxford to address some political club.

"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now.

My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you know her by sight?"

I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.

"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything of her before you left?"

I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting old friends and being introduced to new ones that I had had neither time nor eyes....

"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by the slip?"

The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the A.B.C. with an impatient slap.

"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left London."

"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.

"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.

"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been called away suddenly?"

"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place--with a view to tracing her."

He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western District Office at Victoria."

The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows: