But Brendon was disappointed. Jenny
sent word that she could not see him to-day and hoped he would take
occasion to call on the following morning, when he would find her
more composed.

To this he could answer nothing and presently started to rejoin the
car. Giuseppe overtook him from the house; but he could only report
that the day had passed without event at "Crow's Nest."

"Nobody has come but a clergyman," he told Brendon, "and we have
been careful to leave everything just as the old captain left it."

"I will see you to-morrow," promised Mark; then he rejoined the
inspector and their car went on its way.

A surprise and a keen disappointment awaited them at Dartmouth. The
day's work had produced no result whatever. Not a trace of Robert
Redmayne was reported from anywhere and Inspector Damarell offered
the former solution of suicide. But Brendon would not hear it now.

"He is no more dead this time than he was six months ago," he
answered; "but he has some system of disguise, or concealment, that
utterly defeats the ordinary methods of a man hunt. We must try
bloodhounds to-morrow, though the scent is spoiled now and we can
hardly hope for any useful results."

"Perhaps he'll write from Plymouth again as he did before,"
suggested the inspector.

Weary and out of spirits, Mark left the police station and went to
his hotel. To be baffled was an experience not new to him and thus
far he felt no more tribulation than a great cricketer, who
occasionally fails and retires for a "duck," knowing that his second
innings may still be told in three figures; but what concerned him
was the double failure on the same case. He felt puzzled by events
and still more puzzled by his own psychology, which seemed incapable
of reacting as usual to the stimulus of mystery and the challenge of
a problem, apparently ineluctable.

He felt that his wits were playing him false and, instead of
cleaving some bold and original way to the heart of a difficulty, as
was his wont, he could see no ray of light thrown by the candle of
his own inspiration. Inspiration, in fact, he wholly lacked. Once
only in the past--after an attack of influenza--had he felt so
barren of initiative as now, so feeble and ineffective.

He fell asleep at last, thinking not of the vanished sailor, but
Jenny Pendean. That she must suffer at her uncle's sudden death was
natural and he had not been surprised to learn of her collapse. For
she was sensitive; she ha