send!" Mr. Pardon cried
enthusiastically; but he put his notebook back into his pocket.

"Have you made an exhaustive search for Miss Tarrant?" Basil Ransom
asked of him. Mr. Pardon, at this inquiry, eyed him with a sudden,
familiar archness, expressive of the idea of competition; so that Ransom
added: "You needn't be afraid, I'm not a reporter."

"I didn't know but what you had come on from New York."

"So I have--but not as the representative of a newspaper."

"Fancy his taking you----" Mrs. Luna murmured, with indignation.

"Well, I have been everywhere I could think of," Mr. Pardon remarked. "I
have been hunting round after your sister's agent, but I haven't been
able to catch up with him; I suppose he has been hunting on his side.
Miss Chancellor told me--Mrs. Luna may remember it--that she shouldn't
be here at all during the week, and that she preferred not to tell me
either where or how she was to spend her time until the momentous
evening. Of course I let her know that I should find out if I could, and
you may remember," he said to Mrs. Luna, "the conversation we had on the
subject. I remarked, candidly, that if they didn't look out they would
overdo the quietness. Doctor Tarrant has felt very low about it.
However, I have done what I could with the material at my command, and
the _Vesper_ has let the public know that her whereabouts was the
biggest mystery of the season. It's difficult to get round the
_Vesper_."

"I am almost afraid to open my lips in your presence," Mrs. Luna broke
in, "but I must say that I think my sister was strangely communicative.
She told you ever so much that I wouldn't have breathed."

"I should like to try you with something you know!" Matthias Pardon
returned imperturbably. "This isn't a fair trial, because you don't
know. Miss Chancellor came round--came round considerably, there's no
doubt of that; because a year or two ago she was terribly
unapproachable. If I have mollified her, madam, why shouldn't I mollify
you? She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am
willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me
enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate,"
he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an
hour ago, at the Hall, they knew nothing whatever about Miss Tarrant,
beyond the fact that about a month ago she came there, with Miss
Chancellor, to try her voice, which rang all over