that day in the neighborhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward
Boyne, either alone or in company, in any of the neighboring
villages, or on the road across the downs, or at either of the
local railway-stations. The sunny English noon had swallowed him
as completely as if he had gone out into Cimmerian night.

Mary, while every external means of investigation was working at
its highest pressure, had ransacked her husband's papers for any
trace of antecedent complications, of entanglements or
obligations unknown to her, that might throw a faint ray into the
darkness. But if any such had existed in the background of
Boyne's life, they had disappeared as completely as the slip of
paper on which the visitor had written his name. There remained
no possible thread of guidance except--if it were indeed an
exception--the letter which Boyne had apparently been in the act
of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter,
read and reread by his wife, and submitted by her to the police,
yielded little enough for conjecture to feed on.

"I have just heard of Elwell's death, and while I suppose there
is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer--" That was
all. The "risk of trouble" was easily explained by the newspaper
clipping which had apprised Mary of the suit brought against her
husband by one of his associates in the Blue Star enterprise.
The only new information conveyed in the letter was the fact of
its showing Boyne, when he wrote it, to be still apprehensive of
the results of the suit, though he had assured his wife that it
had been withdrawn, and though the letter itself declared that
the plaintiff was dead. It took several weeks of exhaustive
cabling to fix the identity of the "Parvis" to whom the