"I wired him last night to his London address, and got a reply first
thing this morning," said Stafford. "He's coming along by the 5:15 A.M.
from King's Cross--he'll be here before noon. I want to get things to
work before he arrives, though. And the first thing to do, of course, is
to make sympathetic inquiry, and to search the shore, and the cliffs, and
these woods--and that Keep. All that we'll attend to at once."

But on going round to the village police-station they found that
Stafford's ideas had already been largely anticipated. The news of the
strange gentleman's mysterious disappearance had spread like wild-fire
through Scarhaven and the immediate district during the previous evening,
and at daybreak parties of fisher-folk had begun a systematic search.
These parties kept coming in to report progress all the morning: by noon
they had all returned. They had searched the famous rocks, the woods, the
park, the Keep, and its adjacent ruins, and the cliffs and shore for some
considerable distance north and south of the bay, and there was no
result. Not a trace, not a sign of the missing man was to be found
anywhere. And when, at one o'clock, Stafford and Copplestone walked up to
the little station to meet Sir Cresswell Oliver, it was with the
disappointing consciousness that they had no news to give him.

Copplestone, who nourished a natural taste for celebrities of any sort,
born of his artistic leanings and tendencies, had looked forward with
interest to meeting Sir Cresswell Oliver, who, only a few months
previously, had made himself famous by a remarkable feat of seamanship in
which great personal bravery and courage had been displayed. He had a
vague expectation of seeing a bluff, stalwart, sea-dog type of man;
instead, he presently found himself shaking hands with a very
quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, who might have been a barrister or a
doctor, of pleasant and kindly manners. With him was another gentleman of