CHAPTER XXV

It did not take more than five minutes to cover the distance between
Sunnington Crescent and the modest little house where Captain Morrison
and his daughter lived; so in a very brief time Cleek had the
satisfaction of interviewing both.

Narkom's assertion, that Miss Morrison was "half out of her mind over
the distressing affair" had prepared him to encounter a weeping,
red-eyed, heart-broken creature of the most excitable type. He found
instead a pale, serious-faced, undemonstrative girl of somewhat
uncertain age--sweet of voice, soft of step, quiet of demeanour--who was
either one of those persons who repress all external evidence of
internal fires, and bear their crosses in silence, or was as
cold-blooded as a fish and as heartless as a statue. He found the father
the exact antithesis of the daughter, a nervous, fretful, irritable
individual (gout had him by the heels at the time), who was as full of
"yaps" and snarls as any Irish terrier, and as peevish and fussy as a
fault-finding old woman. Added to this, he had a way of glancing all
round the room, and avoiding the eye of the person to whom he was
talking. And if Cleek had been like the generality of people, and hadn't
known that some of the best and "straightest" men in the world have been
afflicted in this manner, and some of the worst and "crookedest" could
look you straight in the eyes without turning a hair, he might have
taken this for a bad sign. Then, too, he seemed to have a great many
more wrappings and swaddlings about his gouty foot than appeared to be
necessary--unless it was done to make his helpless state very apparent,
and to carry out his assertion that he hadn't been able to walk a foot
unassisted for the past week, and could not, therefore, be in any way
connected with young Carboys' mysterious vanishment. Still, even that
had its contra aspect. He might be one of those individuals who make a
mountain out of a molehill of pain, and insist upon a dozen poultices
where one would do.

But Cleek could not forget that, as Narkom had said, there was not the
shadow of doubt that in the event of Carboys having died possessed of
means, the Captain would be the heir-at-law by virtue of his kinship;
and it is a great deal more satisfactory to be rich oneself than to be
dependent upon the generosity of a rich son-in-law. So, after adroitly
exercising the "pump" upon other matters:

"I suppose, Miss Morrison," said Cleek in a casual of