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had rung Lesley up of his own free will, the suggestion to go round and see her was of his own making, and he had only just left the house. Why should he come back? Or if he did come back, when and how did he leave again? The chain was up on the front door-he couldn’t have gone out that way. There’s a door at the back of the house, and a side door from the kitchen premises to the stable yard. Robbins was pressed about these doors. They were both locked, and the keys in the locks. All the ground floor windows have old-fashioned wooden shutters secured by an iron bar. Robbins swears they were all closed and barred when he went round to open up in the morning. I suppose Henry might have dropped from a first-floor window. But, good lord, why should he, and risk breaking a leg, when he could have walked down by the back stairs and out by the kitchen way? Even then, he’d got to get off the premises. There’s a ten-foot wall all round the place, and every single gate locked on the inside. I’m twelve years younger than Henry, and an inch taller and a couple of stone lighter, and I’d be very sorry to climb that wall. Besides, he could have got past Robbins without waking him if he’d liked, and out by the front door-only then the chain wouldn’t have been up. No, it doesn’t make sense-he never came back into the house. The door from the glazed passage into the street was just as he left it when he went out, you know-unlocked, with the key sticking on the inside.”
    Miss Silver knitted for a few moments in silence. Then she said,
    “What do you think happened to him, Frank?”
    “Well, he was a rolling stone-I told you that. I think he started out to see Lesley, and then he had a come-over of some sort. Remember they’d quarrelled. If they made it up now, he’d be in for life. Perhaps he saw his last chance slipping. Perhaps he thought he was selling himself for a mess of pottage. Perhaps he thought he’d just cut and run, and did it-a last dash for freedom, so to speak. Suppose he did that without any plan-managed to thumb a lift. Remember it was bright moonlight.”
    “Yes?” said Miss Silver in a gently interrogatory manner. “And what then?”
    “Well, he wouldn’t be the first man who’d pitched a tale and enlisted under somebody else’s name. I’ve been over it hundreds of times, and I think that’s what must have happened. He didn’t get away by train-that’s certain. There are two stations he might have reached by walking-Burshot and Ledlington. At Burshot he’d have been recognized, and at either place he’d have been sufficiently conspicuous to be noticed-without hat, scarf, or overcoat.”
    “And nobody saw him?”
    “He’s never been seen or heard of again.”

chapter 9
    The room was quiet for a time. It did not seem long to either of them. Frank Abbott broke the silence by saying,
    “I haven’t known you for seven years, have I? But if I don’t put something on this fire, it will go out.”
    Miss Silver smiled in rather an absent manner and said,
    “Pray do so.”
    She watched him being dexterous with some reluctant embers and a shovelful of coal. Chief Detective Inspector Lamb had once remarked in her presence that if Frank was good for nothing else, he could always manage to get a fire going. Which was his way of counteracting what he considered to be a tendency to wind in the head.
    When the fire was producing small but hopeful flames, she said,
    “There are still a few questions I should like to ask, and if you do not mind, I should like to take some notes.”
    She laid down her knitting, went over to the writing-table, and opened the shiny green exercise-book which lay ready upon the blotting-pad.
    Frank Abbott got up from his stool and took up a position half sitting, half leaning, against the far corner of the table.
    “Well, what can I do for you?”
    “You can tell me who was in the house when Mr. Clayton disappeared.”
    He gave her the names, ticking them off on his