“I might do that, of course. But I don’t see what good it would be. I shouldn’t be any nearer finding the men.”
“No, you wouldn’t; but you’d have time to turn round and think things out a bit. They’d be sure to talk for a good while once you get them started, and it’s quite possible that by the time they’d finished, the two men might have turned up somewhere or other.”
“I don’t see what can possibly have happened to them,” said Mr. Goddard. “After you pass Rosivera the road runs the whole way between the bog and the sea. They couldn’t get off it if they tried. And they must have got as far as Rosivera when they started right, for there isn’t a cross road between this and there. Even if they were fools enough to go up some bohireen or other, they’d only have to turn around and come down again.”
“That seems to me,” said Lord Manton, “to knock the bottom out of the theory that they’ve got lost. As you say, they can’t be lost. They might sit down on the side of the road and cry; but if they did the women on the cars would have seen them.”
“I’ve thought all that out. I can’t see how they’ve got lost; but the fact is they are lost.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Lord Manton.
“Surely you don’t suppose that they’re playing off a practical joke on us.”
“Come into the library and have a smoke,” said Lord Manton.
“I’m not sure that I ought to. With this business on my hands I scarcely feel justified—I think I should——”
“Oh, nonsense. You can’t do anything until you’ve thought. Premature and imperfectly considered action in a case like this is always a mistake, and you can’t possibly think properly without tobacco.”