"'I beg your pardon, thir; but he'th not,' retorted Nathan, moving from me as though to avoid a blow. 'The gentleman ain't in the thmoking-room.'
"'Fool!' I cried, and darted from him, but the next moment I had found his words too true. Carhart had vanished, disappeared, melted, as one might say, into the element of air."
"Strange!" I reflected, lowering my voice as an aid to Barton's climax.
"Strange enough!" cried Willoughby, less impressed than I had hoped. "And so your servant was the first to make the discovery?"
"Yes," answered Barton; "although I have never allowed him to know of my astonishment. I did my best to pass it off as a joke. I allowed him to believe that Carhart had taken leave of me before the stupid blunder of the second coffee."
"Athking your pardon, thir," came in injured, lisping accents from the gloom. "I never brought no thecond coffee that night, becauth the cat upthet the coffee-pot, nor did I thay, thir, that the gentleman had gone."
Barton, concealing his annoyance, sat regarding his domestic for a moment with assumed indifference.
"And pray, what did you say, then, when you stood there beside me at the door?" he demanded.
"Nothing at all, thir," answered Nathan. "I wathn't there. I went back to my pantry when I had let out the methenger, and there I thtayed until I heard you hammering on the wallth and floor with the fire-shovel."
"That will do, Nathan," returned Barton stiffly; and I perceived an odd expression on the face of Willoughby.