and formula!"

CHAPTER VII.

PERFUME.

Search of house and grounds was fruitless.

Before half-past eleven the rainstorm was over, and a bright moon
lighted the brothers and the men-servants to the discovery of just
nothing at all.

Except to give an order, or make a suggestion, neither Bellamy spoke
until they stood alone together in the hall.

They looked at each other like men who from dreams of hell have waked to
find it.

Then the elder groaned, beside himself.

"The poor girl!" he said. "To think of her ill-used--murdered, perhaps!"

The younger man cut him short with a glance, which even through his
agony pierced Randal as if the livid lightning of a god had been
launched at the ineptitude of human compassion.

"Cut it out," said Dick. "That's a car coming. The father. Take him
right back to town in it. You've got the pull. You can make the
political coves get Scotland Yard and the police of the world working,
before you'd get the county bobbies into their trousers."

The car drew up in front of the house.

"How shall I tell him?" said Randal.

"I shall," answered Dick. "You get into tweeds--jump." And he went to
meet Caldegard at the door.

"Good God!" said the old man, when he saw the young one's face. "What's
happened?"

"I'll tell you," said Dick. "Is that a good car?"

Caldegard knew how to obey. "It's Broadfoot's--Rolls-Royce, six
cylinder," he replied promptly.

"Tell the man he must take you back to town."

When the order was given, the lover, in curt and terrible phrases, told
the father what had happened. And Caldegard's face, as he listened
without a word, was a tragedy which Dick Bellamy, heeding it not at all
for the moment, remembered all his life.

"Set every dog in the world on the men who've stolen Ambrotox," he said
in conclusion, "and you'll find Amaryllis. A trace of one is a track of
the other; news of either is news of both. Leave the local work to me."

Caldegard looked into the strange face, and almost flinched from the
terrible eyes.

"I'll do all you say," he replied simply.

Then Randal came, pulling on his coat. His brother made him swallow
whisky and water, forced the elder man to do the same, and before they
left, demanded money of Randal.

"There's a hundred and twenty pounds in notes, in the small right-hand
drawer in the safe," he replied, "--unless they got that too."

"No," said Dick. "They were hustled. Let her rip," he said to the
drive