eas hitherto he had
been so confidential and friendly.

Womanlike she ascribed it to illness. He had been over-working. He
was a man of such impulsive energy, so full of ideas, so impatient of
delays. He seemed always to want to do everything at the moment he
thought of it. Incidentally he expected others to be imbued with his
own vitality. He had worn himself out, she decided, or was it that he
was being drugged? Time after time the idea had suggested itself to
her, only to be dismissed as melodramatic.

Sometimes there would cross her mind a suspicion so strange, so
fantastic that she would brush it aside as utterly ridiculous.

Luncheon arrived and no John Dene. Dorothy made an indifferent meal.
One o'clock passed, two o'clock came. She had visions of him lying in
his room at the hotel too ill to summon assistance. She determined
upon action and rang up the Ritzton. To her enquiry as to whether or
no Mr. John Dene were in came the reply that he was not. Would they
find out at what time he left the hotel? It was his secretary
speaking. Yes, they would if Dorothy would hold on.

At the end of what seemed an age came the reply: Mr. John Dene had left
the hotel on the previous morning and had not since returned.

With a clatter the receiver fell from Dorothy's hand. It was something
worse than illness then that had kept John Dene from his office! This
she saw clearly. Probably he was lying dead in some out of the way
spot, a victim of the hidden hand. She felt physically sick at the
thought. He was such a splendid man, she told herself. Ready to give
everything for nothing. The sort of man that made for victory.

Suddenly she remembered the episode of the taxi on the previous evening
and became galvanised to action. What a fool she had been. Seizing
the receiver of the private line to the Admiralty, she demanded to be
put through to Mr. Blair. Presently she heard his mellow, patient
voice. No, he had heard nothing of John Dene, nor had he seen him for
several days. There was a note of plaintive gratitude in Mr. Blair's
voice; but Dorothy was too worried to notice it.

Putting up the receiver, she snatched up her hat, jabbed the pins
through it, one of them into her head, and almost throwing herself into
her coat, dashed down the stairs and literally ran across Waterloo
Place, down the Duke of York's steps into the Admiralty. She passed
swiftly in and up to Mr. Blair's room, into which she