"Without a doubt. I think he saw trouble ahead. By the by, have you heard anything of Phipps lately? Why not ring up and enquire about his health?"
Dredlinton stared a little wildly at the speaker. Then he hurried to the telephone, snatched up the receiver and talked into it, his eyes all the time fixed upon Wingate in a sort of frightened stare.
"Mayfair 365," he demanded. "Quick, please! An urgent call! Yes? Who's that? Yes, yes! Browning—Mr. Phipps' secretary. I understand. Where's Mr. Phipps?—What?"
Dredlinton drew away from the telephone for a moment. He dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. He looked like a man on the verge of collapse.
"Something unusual seems to have happened," Wingate remarked softly.
Dredlinton was listening once more to the voice at the other end of the telephone.
"You've tried his club? Eh? And the restaurant where he was to have dined? What do you say? Kept them waiting and never turned up? You've rung up the police?—What do they say?—Doing their best?—My God!"
The receiver slipped from his nerveless fingers. He turned around to face Wingate, crouching over the table, his arms resting upon it, his eyes blood-shot, a slave to abject fear.
"Peter Phipps has disappeared!" he gasped weakly.
The atmosphere of the room seemed to have completely changed during the last few minutes. Wingate was no longer the conventional and casual caller. His face had hardened, his eyes were brighter, his manner ominous. He was the modern figure of Fate, playing for a desperate stake with cold and deadly earnestness. Dredlinton was simply panic-stricken. He was white to the lips; his eyes were filled with the frightened gleam of the trapped animal; he shook and twitched in a paroxysm of nervous collapse. He seemed terrified yet fascinated by the strange metamorphosis in his visitor.