Lord Manton kept excellent cigars for his guests. Mr. Goddard, who had smoked them before, lit one with pleasure, and stretched himself in a deep chair. He had breakfasted heartily, in spite of anxiety and worry. He felt that a short rest was due to him. He was prepared to believe that a period of calm reflection was due to the case of the two errant Members of Parliament. Lord Manton did not smoke his own cigars, and rarely lay back in his own very comfortable chairs. He preferred an upright kind of seat, and he smoked cigarettes, lighting them one after another in rapid succession, while he talked, wrote or thought. On this occasion he did not remain seated for more than a couple of minutes. Before his first cigarette was half smoked he stood up and talked down to Mr. Goddard from a commanding position beside the chimney-piece.
“I don’t believe,” he said, “I don’t for one moment believe, that those Members of Parliament are lost.”
“Lost or disappeared or stolen,” said Mr. Goddard, “it’s all the same so far as I am concerned. I’ve got to find them.”
“It’s not in the least the same thing. If they were simply lost in the way a child or a dog or a collar stud gets lost, then you’d know where to look for them. Draw a circle of, say, ten miles in diameter, with Rosivera for its centre, and they must be inside of it somewhere. You’ve only got to put men enough on the job and you’re bound to find them. But if they have disappeared of their own accord, vanished intentionally and deliberately, then you will have to proceed in quite a different way.”
“It’s all very well to talk of Dr. O’Grady and Patsy Devlin disappearing like that; but it’s different with these men. Why the devil should they disappear?”
“They can’t have got lost,” said Lord Manton. “You satisfied me, if you did not satisfy yourself, about that; and if they’re lost they must have bolted. How else can you account for their not turning up?”
“But why should they? What had they to run away from?”
“That, of course, I can’t say for certain, for I don’t know the men. But, taking into consideration the little I do know about them, I can make a guess. Can’t you imagine it? They had with them three women, two wives and an aunt. The one who hadn’t his aunt with him very probably has one at home, and it’s quite possible that they both have sisters.”
“I dare say they have. I didn’t ask.”
“Well now, think. They were English Members of Parliament, and therefore presumably pretty well to do. They probably had businesses somewhere, and residences in a suburban district. What does all that mean? Respectability. Imagine to yourself the appalling weight of respectability involved in the possession of a wife, an aunt, a sister, a business, investments, and a seat in Parliament. Can’t you fancy the poor fellows coming to find it all perfectly intolerable; saying to each other: ‘Hang it, let’s get off and run loose for a while’? I don’t say I’m right. I can’t be sure, because I don’t know the men, and I didn’t see the women; but what I’m offering you is an intelligible explanation. What sort of women were they? What were they like?”