"I kept the corner of an eye on him," answered Mr. Lindsey, knowingly. "He saw what I was after! He's a clever fellow, that—but he took the mask off his face for the thousandth part of a second. I saw!"
The two listeners were so amazed by this that they sat in silence for a while, staring at Mr. Lindsey with open-mouthed amazement.
"It's a dark, dark business!" sighed Murray at last. "What's the true meaning of it, do you think, Mr. Lindsey?"
"Some secret that's being gradually got at," replied Mr. Lindsey, promptly. "That's what it is. And there's nothing to do, just now, but wait until somebody comes from Holmshaw and Portlethorpe's. Holmshaw is an old man—probably Portlethorpe himself will come along. He may know something—they've been family solicitors to the Carstairs lot for many a year. But it's my impression that Sir Gilbert Carstairs is away!—and that his wife's after him. And if you want to be doing something, try to find out where she went on her bicycle yesterday—likely, she rode to some station in the neighbourhood, and then took train."
Mr. Lindsey and I then went to the office, and we had not been there long when a telegram arrived from Newcastle. Mr. Portlethorpe himself was coming on to Berwick immediately. And in the middle of the afternoon he arrived—a middle-aged, somewhat nervous-mannered man, whom I had seen two or three times when we had business at the Assizes, and whom Mr. Lindsey evidently knew pretty well, judging by their familiar manner of greeting each other.
"What's all this, Lindsey?" asked Mr. Portlethorpe, as soon as he walked in, and without any preliminaries. "Your wire says Sir Gilbert and Lady Carstairs have disappeared. Does that mean—"
"Did you read your newspaper yesterday?" interrupted Mr. Lindsey, who knew that what we had read in the Dundee Advertiser had also appeared in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. "Evidently not, Portlethorpe, or you'd have known, in part at any rate, what my wire meant. But I'll tell you in a hundred words—and then I'll ask you a couple of questions before we go any further."
He gave Mr. Portlethorpe an epitomized account of the situation, and Mr. Portlethorpe listened attentively to the end. And without making any comment he said three words:
"Well—your questions?"
"The first," answered Mr. Lindsey, "is this—How long is it since you saw or heard from Sir Gilbert Carstairs?"