"Wouldn't hurt a fly, sir. I have known some whose charity extended
to the vermin on their own bodies."

Mrs. Wesley sat tapping the mahogany gently with her finger-tips.
"To my thinking, the key of this mystery, if there be one, lies at
Surat. My brother had powerful enemies: his letters make that clear.
We must inquire into _them_--their numbers and the particular grudge
they bore him--and also into the state of his mind. He was not the
sort of person to be kidnapped in open day."

--"By a Thames waterman, for instance, madam?" said Captain Bewes,
jocularly, but instantly changed his tone. "You suggest that he may
have disappeared on his own account? To avoid his enemies, you
mean?"

"As to his motives, sir, I say nothing: but it certainly looks to me
as if he had planned to give you the slip."

"Tut-tut!" exclaimed Matthew. "And left his money behind?
Not likely!"

"We have still his boxes to search--"

"Under power of attorney," Sam suggested. "We must see about getting
it to-morrow."

"Well, madam"--Captain Bewes knocked out his pipe, drained his glass,
and rose--"the boxes shall be delivered up as soon as you bring me
authority: and I trust, for my own sake as well as yours, the