In less than a quarter of an hour after leaving the gate of Maudesley Park, the fly came to a stand-still before Woodbine Cottage. Mr. Carter paid the man and dismissed the vehicle, and went alone into the little garden.

He rang a bell on one side of the half-glass door, and had ample leisure to contemplate the stuffed birds and marine curiosities that adorned the little hall of the cottage before any one came to answer his summons. He rang a second time before anyone came, but after a delay of about five minutes a young woman appeared, with her face tied up in a coloured handkerchief. The detective asked to see Major Vernon, and the young woman ushered him into a little parlour at the back of the cottage, without either delay or hesitation.

The occupant of the cottage was sitting in an arm-chair by the fire. There was very little light in the room, for the only window looked into a miniature conservatory, where there were all manner of prickly and spiky plants of the cactus kind, which had been the delight of the late owner of Woodbine Cottage.

Mr. Carter looked very sharply at the gentleman sitting in the easy-chair; but the closest inspection showed him nothing but a good-looking man, between fifty and sixty years of age, with a determined-looking mouth, half shaded by a grey moustache.

“I’ve come to make a few inquiries about a friend of yours, Major Vernon,” the detective said; “Mr. Dunbar, of Maudesley Abbey, who has been missing since four o’clock this morning.”

The gentleman in the easy-chair was smoking a meerschaum. As Mr. Carter said those two words, “four o’clock,” his teeth made a little clicking noise upon the amber mouthpiece of the pipe.

The detective heard the sound, slight as it was, and drew his inference from it. Major Vernon had seen Joseph Wilmot, and knew that he had left the Abbey at four o’clock, and thus gave a little start of surprise when he found that the exact hour was known to others.

“You know where Mr. Dunbar has gone?” said Mr. Carter, looking still more sharply at the gentleman in the easy-chair.

“On the contrary, I was thinking of looking in upon him at the Abbey this evening.”

“Humph!” murmured the detective, “then it’s no use my asking you any questions on the subject?”

“None whatever. Henry Dunbar is gone away from the Abbey, you say? Why, I thought he was still under medical supervision — couldn’t move off his sofa, except to take a turn upon a pair of crutches.”

“I believe it was so, but he has disappeared notwithstanding.”

“What do you mean by disappeared? He has gone away, I suppose, and he was free to go away, wasn’t he?”

“Oh! of course; perfectly free.”

“Then I don’t so much wonder that he went,” exclaimed the occupant of the cottage, stooping over the fire, and knocking the ashes out of his meerschaum. “He’d been tied by the leg long enough, poor devil! But how is it you’re running about after him, as if he was a little boy that had bolted from his precious mother? You’re not the surgeon who was attending him?”

“No, I’m employed by Lady Jocelyn; in fact, to tell you the honest truth,” said the detective, with a simplicity of manner that was really charming: “to tell you the honest truth, I’m neither more nor less than a private detective, and I have come down from London direct to look after the missing gentleman. You see, Lady Jocelyn is afraid the long illness and fever, and all that sort of thing, may have had a very bad effect upon her poor father, and that he’s a little bit touched in the upper story, perhaps; — and, upon my word,” added the detective, frankly, “I think this sudden bolt looks very like it. In which case I fancy we may look for an attempt at suicide. What do you think, now, Major Vernon, as a friend of the missing gentleman, eh?”

The Major smiled.

“Upon my word,” he said, “I don’t think you’re so very far away from the mark. Henry Dunbar has been rather queer in his ways since that railway smash.”

“Just so. I suppose you wouldn’t have any objection to my looking about your house, and round the garden and outbuildings? Your friend might hide himself somewhere about your place. When once they take an eccentric turn, there’s no knowing where to have ’em.”

Major Vernon shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t think Dunbar’s likely to have got into my house without my knowledge,” he said; “but you are welcome to examine the place from garret to cellar if that’s any satisfaction to you.”

He rang a bell as he spoke. It was answered by the girl whose face was tied up.

“Ah, Betty, you’ve got the toothache again, have you? A nice excuse for slinking your work, eh, my girl? That’s about the size of your toothache, I expect! Look here now, this gentleman wants to see the house, and you’re to show him over it, and over the garden too, if he likes — and be quick about it, for I want my dinner.”

The girl curtseyed in an awkward countrified manner, and ushered Mr. Carter into the hall.

“Betty!” roared the master of the house, as the girl reached the foot of the stair with the detective; “Betty, come here!”

She went back to her master, and Mr. Carter heard a whispered conversation, very brief, of which the last sentence only was audible.

That last sentence ran thus:

“And if you don’t hold your tongue, I’ll make you pay for it.”

“Ho, ho!” thought the detective; “Miss Betsy is to hold her tongue, is she? We’ll see about that.”

The girl came back to the hall, and led Mr. Carter into the two sitting-rooms in the front of the house. They were small rooms, with small furniture. They were old-fashioned rooms, with low ceilings, and queer cupboards nestling in out-of-the-way holes and corners: and Mr. Carter had enough work to do in squeezing himself into the interior of these receptacles, which all smelt, more or less, of chandlery and rum — that truly seaman-like spirit having been a favourite beverage with the late inhabitant of the cottage.

After examining half-a-dozen cupboards in the lower regions, Mr. Carter and his guide ascended to the upper story.

The girl called Betsy ushered the detective into a bedroom, which she said was her master’s, and where the occupation of the Major was made manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale tobacco, and a collection of pipes and cigar-boxes on the chimney-piece.

The girl opened the door of an impossible-looking little cupboard in a corner behind a four-post bed; but instead of inspecting the cupboard, Mr. Carter made a sudden rush at the door, locked it, and then put the key in his pocket.

“No, thank you, Miss Innocence,” he said; “I don’t crick my neck, or break my back, by looking into any more of your cupboards. Just you come here.”

“Here,” was the window, before which Mr. Carter planted himself.

The girl obeyed very quietly. She would have been a pretty-looking girl but for her toothache, or rather, but for the coloured handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face, and was tied in a knot at the top of her head. As it was, Mr. Carter could only see that she had pretty brown eyes, which shifted left and right as he looked at her.

“Oh, yes, you’re a............