for a moment, and then withdrew his eyes from
his friend's face.

"I presume you have already telephoned to the hotel in Paris where you
first met Madame Wolsky?"

"Why, it never occurred to me to do that!" cried Sylvia. "What a good
idea!"

"Wait," he said. "I will go and do it for you."

But five minutes later he came back, shaking his head. "I am sorry to say
the people at the Hotel de l'Horloge know nothing of Madame Wolsky. They
have had no news of her since you and she both left the place. I wonder
if the Wachners know more of her disappearance than they have told you?"

"What _do_ you mean?" asked Sylvia, very much surprised.

"They're such odd people," he said, in a dissatisfied voice. "And you
know they were always with your friend. When you were not there, they
hardly ever left her for a moment."

"But I thought I had told you how distressed they are about it? How they
waited for her last evening and how she never came? Oh no, the Wachners
know nothing," declared Sylvia confidently.

CHAPTER XVI

There is something very bewildering and distressing in the sudden
disappearance or even the absence of a human being to whose affectionate
and constant presence one has become accustomed. And as the hours went
by, and no letter or message arrived from Anna Wolsky, Sylvia became
seriously troubled, and spent much of her time walking to and from the
Pension Malfait.

Surely Anna could not have left Paris, still less France, without her
luggage? All sorts of dreadful possibilities crowded on Sylvia's mind;
Anna Wolsky might have met with an accident: she might now be lying
unidentified in a Paris hospital....

At last she grew so uneasy about her friend that she felt she must do
something!

Mine host of the Villa du Lac was kind and sympathetic, but even he could
suggest no way of finding out where Anna had gone.

And then Sylvia suddenly bethought herself that there was one thing she
could do which she had not done: she could surely go to the police of
Lacville and ask them to make inquiries in Paris as to whether there had
been an accident of which the victim in any way recalled Anna Wolsky.

To her surprise, M. Polperro shook his head very decidedly.

"Oh no, do not go to the police!" he said in an anxious tone. "No, no, I
do not advise you to do that! Heaven knows I would do anything in reason
to help you, Madame, to find your friend. But I beg of you not to ask me
to go for you to the pol