But an inexplicable silence reigned and nowhere was the darkness
spotted by the flame of any camp-fire. In the morning I looked down
to Tangier. The first thing which I noticed was your broken stump of
mole, the second that nowhere upon the ring of broken wall could be
seen the flash of a red coat or the glitter of a musket-barrel. I came
down into Tangier, I had no money and no friends. I got away in a
felucca to Spain. From Spain I worked my passage to England. I came
home nine months ago. And here is the trouble. Three months after I
returned Major Lashley disappeared. You understand?"

"Oh," cried Sir Charles, and he jumped in his chair. "I understand
indeed. Suspicion settled upon you," and as it ever will upon the
least provocation suspicion passed for a moment into Fosbrook's brain.
He was heartily ashamed of it when he looked into Jerkley's face. It
would need, assuredly, a criminal of an uncommon astuteness to come at
this hour with this story. Mr. Jerkley was not that criminal.

"Yes," he answered simply, "I am looked at askance, devil a doubt of
it. I would not care a snap of the fingers were I alone in the matter;
but there is Mrs. Lashley ... she is neither wife nor widow ... and,"
he took a step across the room and said quickly--and were she known
for a widow, there is still the suspicion upon me like a great iron
door between us."

"Can you help us, Sir Charles! Can you see light?"

"You must tell me the details of the Major's disappearance," said Sir
Charles, and the following details were given.

On the eleventh of December and at ten o'clock of the evening Major
Lashley left the house to visit the stables which were situated in
the Park and at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the house. A
favourite mare, which he had hunted the day before, had gone lame,
and all day Major Lashley had shown some anxiety; so that there was a
natural reason why he should have gone out at the last moment before
retiring to bed. Mrs. Lashley went up to her room at the same time,
indeed with so exact a correspondence of movement that as she reached
the polished tulip-wood landing at the top of the stairs, she heard
the front door latch as her husband drew it to behind him. That was
the last she heard of him.

"She woke up suddenly," said Jerkley, "in the middle of the night, and
found that her husband was not at her side. She waited for a little
and then rose from her bed. She drew the window-curtains aside a