“We’re looking very tragical about it,” he said lightly. “Mysterious joint disappearance of Leonard de Cartienne and a photograph of Mr. Hart. Now, if it had been a photograph of a pretty girl instead of a middle-aged man, we might have connected the two. Hallo!”
He broke off in his speech and turned round. Standing in the doorway, looking at us, was Leonard de Cartienne, with a slight smile on his thin lips.
“Behold the missing link—I mean man!” exclaimed Cecil. “Good old Leonard! Do you know, you gave us quite a fright. We expected to find you here and the room was empty. Are you better?”
“Yes, thanks! I’m all right now,” he answered. “I’ve been out in the yard and had a blow. What’s Milly looking so scared about? And what was it I heard you say about a photograph?”
“Father’s likeness has gone,” she explained, turning round with tears in her eyes. “It was there on the mantelpiece this afternoon and now, when we came in to look at it, it has gone!”
“I should think that, if it really has disappeared,” de Cartienne remarked incredulously, “the servant must have moved it. Ask her.”
Miss Hart rang the bell and in the meantime we looked about the room. It was all in vain. We could find no trace of it, nor could the servant who answered the summons give us any information. She had seen it in its usual place early in the morning when she had been dusting. Since then she had not entered the room.
“Deuced queer thing!” declared Cecil, when at last we had relinquished the search. “Deuced queer!” he repeated meditatively, with his hands thrust deep down in his trousers’ pockets and his eyes resting idly upon de Cartienne’s face. “But we can’t do anything more, that’s certain. We really must be off, Milly. We’ve been here almost an hour already, and Brandy and Soda must be getting restless, and you must be famished, I’m sure, Morton. Come along! Good-bye, Milly! Keep your spirits up, old girl! The governor’ll be bound to turn up again in a day or two. And don’t you worry about the photograph. It must be somewhere.”
“But it isn’t!” she declared tearfully. “We’ve looked everywhere! Oh, what shall I do?”
Cecil assumed a most lugubrious expression and looked down sympathetically into her tear-stained face. She certainly was uncommonly pretty.