ively as Breton fitted a key to the
latch, "he's not there, Breton. He's--off!"

"Good heavens, man, I don't know what you're talking about!" exclaimed
Breton, opening the door and walking into the lobby. "Off! Where on
earth should he be off to, when he's made an appointment with you for
eleven, and--Hullo!"

He had opened the door of the room in which Spargo had met Elphick and
Miss Baylis the night before, and was walking in when he pulled himself
up on the threshold with a sharp exclamation.

"Good God!" he cried. "What--what's all this?"

Spargo quietly looked over Breton's shoulder. It needed but one quick
glance to show him that much had happened in that quiet room since he
had quitted it the night before. There stood the easy-chair in which he
had left Elphick; there, close by it, but pushed aside, as if by a
hurried hand, was the little table with its spirit case, its syphon,
its glass, in which stale liquid still stood; there was the novel,
turned face downwards; there, upon the novel, was Elphick's pipe. But
the rest of the room was in dire confusion. The drawers of a bureau had
been pulled open and never put back; papers of all descriptions, old
legal-looking documents, old letters, littered the centre-table and
the floor; in one corner of the room a black japanned box had been
opened, its contents strewn about, and the lid left yawning. And in the
grate, and all over the fender there were masses of burned and charred
paper; it was only too evident that the occupant of the chambers,
wherever he might have disappeared to, had spent some time before his
disappearance in destroying a considerable heap of documents and
papers, and in such haste that he had not troubled to put matters
straight before he went.

Breton stared at this scene for a moment in utter consternation. Then
he made one step towards an inner door, and Spargo followed him.
Together they entered an inner room--a sleeping apartment. There was no
one in it, but there were evidences that Elphick had just as hastily
packed a bag as he had destroyed his papers. The clothes which Spargo
had seen him wearing the previous evening were flung here, there,
everywhere: the gorgeous smoking-jacket was tossed unceremoniously in
one corner, a dress-shirt, in the bosom of which valuable studs still
glistened, in another. One or two suitcases lay about, as if they had
been examined and discarded in favour of something more portable; here,
too, drawers, re