already that he has disappeared. He is an
ill-balanced, neurotic sort of creature. At times he accepts help--even
solicits it--from his more prosperous relations, and at times he won't
speak to us. But of one thing I am perfectly convinced, and that is that
there is no man in the world who would be less likely to make away with
himself. He has a nervous horror of death or pain of any sort, and in
his peculiar way he is much too fond of life ever to dream of voluntarily
shortening it. On the other hand, he is always doing eccentric things. He
probably set out to walk to London--I have known him do it before--and
will turn up there in a fortnight's time."

Mr. Raymond Greene seemed rather to resent having cold water poured upon
his melodramatic imaginings. He turned to Elizabeth, who had remained
silent during the brief colloquy.

"What do you think, Miss Dalstan?" he asked. "Don't you think that, under
the circumstances, I ought to give information to the British police?"

She laughed at him quite good-naturedly, and yet in such a way that a
less sensitive man than Mr. Raymond Greene might well have been conscious
of the note of ridicule.

"No wonder you are such a great success in your profession!" she
observed. "You carry the melodramatic instinct with you, day by day. You
see everything through the dramatist's spectacles."

"That's all very well," Mr. Greene protested, "but you saw the two men
yourself, and you've probably read about the case of mysterious
disappearance. Surely you must admit that the coincidence is
interesting?"

"Alas!" she went on, shaking her head, "I am afraid I must throw cold
water upon your vivid imaginings. You see, my eyesight is better than
yours and I could see the two men distinctly, whilst you could only see
their figures. One of them, the better-dressed, was fair and obviously
affluent, and the other was a labourer. Neither of them could in any way
have answered the description of the missing man."

Mr. Raymond Greene was a little dashed.

"You didn't say so at the time," he complained.

"I really wasn't sufficiently interested," she told him. "Besides,
without knowing anything of Mr. Romilly's cousin, I don't think any
person in the world could have had the courage to seek an exit from his
troubles by means of that canal."

"But my point," Mr. Raymond Greene persisted, "is that it wasn't suicide
at all. I maintain that the situation as I saw it presented all the
possibilit