“Proceed,” Dominey begged.
“I learned this morning, entirely by accident, that Mr. Pelham's servant was either mistaken or willfully deceived me. Wolff did not accompany your butler to the station.”
“And how did you find that out?” Dominey demanded.
“It is immaterial! What is material is that there is a sort of conspiracy amongst the servants here to conceal the manner of his leaving. Do not interrupt me, I beg! Early this morning there was a fresh fall of snow which has now disappeared. Outside the window of the room which I found locked were the marks of footsteps and the tracks of a small car.”
“And what do you gather from all this?” Dominey asked.
“I gather that Wolff must have had friends in the neighbourhood,” Seaman replied, “or else—”
“Well?”
“My last supposition sounds absurd,” Seaman confessed, “but the whole matter is so incomprehensible that I was going to say—or else he was forcibly removed.”
Dominey laughed softly.
“Wolff would scarcely have been an easy man to abduct, would he,” he remarked, “even if we could hit upon any plausible reason for such a thing! As a matter of fact, Seaman,” he concluded, turning on his heel a little abruptly as he saw Rosamund standing in the avenue, “I cannot bring myself to treat this Johann Wolff business seriously. Granted that the man was a spy, well, let him get on with it. We are doing our job here in the most perfect and praiseworthy fashion. We neither of us have the ghost of a secret to hide from his employers.”