to be done.

He must find Brettison at once; and the great question was: Where could
he be?

Here was a grand difficulty at once. Where would a man like Brettison
be likely to sojourn?--a man who ranged through the length and breadth
of the country in pursuit of his specimens.

In an ordinary way. But what would he be doing now and what had he
done?

Stratton shuddered, and pictured a strange scene, one upon which he dare
not dwell; and, leaping up, he took matches and a candle with the
intention of going to his friend's room to try and pick up the clue
there; but by the time he reached his door he was face to face with the
first obstacle. Brettison's door was locked again, and, without
re-summoning the help they had had that evening, entrance was
impossible.

Taking the lamp he entered the bath-closet to try the old door at the
end; but this was firmly screwed up again, and unless he broke through
one of the panels, entrance was impossible that way.

Stratton returned to his chair, hesitating to take so extreme a course;
and sitting down he tried to think out a likely place for Brettison to
have gone.

As he thought, he called to mind various places where he knew him to
have stayed in the past; and selecting one at haphazard--an old-world
place in Kent--he determined to start for there at once, perfectly aware
of the wildness of the scheme and how easily he might spend his life in
such a chase, but there was nothing else to be done. He could trust no
one--get no help. It must be his own work entirely. Brettison was
master of his secret, and there could be no rest for him until the old
man was found.

He started at once, hurrying away from his carefully closed-up chambers
by the northern gate, so that he should not be seen at the porter's
lodge, and was half-way to the station when a thought assailed him,
which made him turn back, suffering all the agony of a guilty man in
dread of discovery.

Brettison could not have taken that body away from the chambers; such a
task was impossible without discovery. It must, after all, be hidden
somewhere within his rooms.

He turned into an embayment over a pier of the bridge he was crossing,
and sat down to think. He knew Brettison's rooms so well--as well as
his own. Where could the body be concealed?

He mentally wandered from one room to the other, and paused in a little
pantry-like place, peering into each nook and corner, and searching
every article o