"Come in. Inspector," he invited. "Come in. Glad to see you. Any news?"
"None whatever, my lord," was the laconic reply.
Dredlinton's face fell. He looked at his visitor, speechless for a moment. The inspector gravely saluted Josephine and accepted the chair to which she waved him.
"Upon my word," Dredlinton declared, "this is most unsatisfactory! Most disappointing!"
"I was afraid that you might find it so," the inspector assented.
Josephine turned in her chair and contemplated the latter with some interest. He was quietly dressed in well-cut but unobtrusive clothes. His long, narrow face had features of sensibility. His hair was grizzled a little at the temples. His composure seemed part of the man, passive and imperturbable.
"Isn't a disappearance of this sort rather unusual?" she enquired.
"Most unusual, your ladyship," the man admitted. "I scarcely remember a similar case."
"'Unusual' seems to me a mild word!" Dredlinton exclaimed angrily. "Here is a well-known young man, with friends in every circle of life and engagements at every hour, a partner in an important commercial undertaking, who is absolutely removed from his rooms in one of the best-known hotels in London, and at the end of three days the police are powerless to find out what has become of him!"
"Up to the present, my lord," the inspector confessed, "we certainly have no clue."