nt to
consult--"

At the moment another man in plain clothes came out of the sitting-room.
He carried in his hand two or three letters, and a few scraps of crumpled
paper. There was an envelope or two among them.

"We have finished, sir," he said to the Superintendent.

Mr. Figgis turned to the lawyer, who was looking rather fixedly at what
the other man had in his hand.

"My document may be among those," he said.

Mr. Figgis handed them to him. There were two envelopes, both addressed
to the missing man, one bearing his name only, some small torn-up scrap
of paper, and three or four private letters.

"Is it among these?" he asked.

Mr. Taynton turned them over.

"No," he said, "it was--it was a large, yes, a large blue paper,
official looking."

"No such thing in the flat, sir," said the second man.

"Very annoying," said the lawyer.

An idea seemed slowly to strike Mr. Figgis.

"He may have taken it to London with him," he said. "But will you not
look round?"

Mr. Taynton did so. He also looked in the waste-paper basket, but it
was empty.

So he went back to make ready to receive his guests, for the little
party. But it had got dark; this "document" whatever it was, appeared to
trouble him. The simple step he had contemplated had not led him in quite
the right direction.

The Superintendent with his colleague went back into the sitting-room
on the lawyer's departure, and Mr. Figgis took from his pocket most of
his notes.

"I went to the station, Wilkinson," he said, "and in the lost luggage
office I found Mr. Mills's bag. It had arrived on Thursday evening. But
it seems pretty certain that its owner did not arrive with it."

"Looks as if he did get out at Falmer," said Wilkinson.

Figgis took a long time to consider this.

"It is possible," he said. "It is also possible that he put his luggage
into the train in London, and subsequently missed the train himself."

Then together they went through the papers that might conceivably help
them. There was a torn-up letter found in his bedroom fireplace, and the
crumpled up envelope that belonged to it. They patiently pieced this
together, but found nothing of value. The other letters referred only to
his engagements in London, none of which were later than Thursday
morning. There remained one crumpled up envelope (also from the
paperbasket) but no letter that in any way corresponded with it. It was
addressed in a rather sprawling, eager, boyish han