Placated by Renouard's docility the Editor gazed at him for a
while. "Aha! I'll tell you how. Learn then that we have begun
the campaign. We have telegraphed his description to the police of
every township up and down the land. And what's more we've
ascertained definitely that he hasn't been in this town for the
last three months at least. How much longer he's been away we
can't tell."

"That's very curious."

"It's very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office
here directly she returned to London after her excursion into the
country to see the old butler. Well--her letter is still lying
there. It has not been called for. Ergo, this town is not his
usual abode. Personally, I never thought it was. But he cannot
fail to turn up some time or other. Our main hope lies just in the
certitude that he must come to town sooner or later. Remember he
doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will want to inquire
for a letter. Well, he'll find a note from Miss Moorsom."

Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough. His profound
distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness
darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented
dreaminess of his eyes. The Editor noted it as a further proof of
that immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of
sentiment fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude--
according to his own favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as
long as a man had not given up correspondence he could not be
looked upon as lost. Fugitive criminals had been tracked in that
way by justice, he reminded his friend; then suddenly changed the