om the house.

On the following day it was in a singularly expectant and almost
joyously alert frame of mind that he bought a first-class ticket
for Whitstable-on-Sea, which is the station for Tankerton.

He would involve Stepton in this affair. There was a mystery in it.
Malling was now convinced of that. And his original supposition did not
satisfy him. But perhaps Mr. Harding meant to help him. Perhaps Mr.
Harding intended to be explicit. The difficulty there was that he also
was walking in darkness, as Malling believed. His telegram had come like
a cry out of this darkness.

"Faversham! Faversham!" the fair Kentish porters were calling. Only about
twenty minutes now! Would the rector be at the station?

He was. As the train ran in alongside the wooden platform, Mailing caught
sight of the towering authoritative figure. Was it his fancy which made
him think that it looked slightly bowed, even perhaps a little shrunken?

"Good of you to come!" said the rector in a would-be hearty voice, but
also with a genuine accent of pleasure. "All the afternoon I have been
afraid of a telegram."

"Why?" asked Malling, as they shook hands.

"Oh, when one is anxious for a thing, one does not always get it. Ha,
ha!"

He broke into a covering laugh.

"Here is a porter. You've only got this bag. Capital! I have a fly
waiting. We go down these steps."

As they descended, Malling remarked:

"By the way, we have a friend staying here. Have you come across him?"

"No, I have seen nobody--that is, no acquaintance. Who is it?"

"Stepton."

"The professor down here!" exclaimed Mr. Harding, as if startled.

"At the hotel, I believe. He's come down to make some investigation."

"I haven't seen him."

They stepped into the fly, and drove through the long street of
Whitstable toward the outlying houses of Tankerton, scattered over
grassy downs above a quiet, brown sea.

"The air is splendid, certainly," observed Malling, drinking it in almost
like a gourmet savoring a wonderful wine.

"It must do me good. Don't you think so?"

The question sounded anxious to Malling's ears.

"It ought to do every one good, I should think."

"Here is Minors."

The fly stopped before a delightfully gay little red doll's house--so
Malling thought of it--standing in a garden surrounded by a wooden
fence, with the downs undulating about it. Not far off, but behind it,
was the sea. And the rector, pointing to a red building in the distance,