"No bad news from Harley Street?" exclaimed I, laying down my razor in a tremor. "I trust Miss...—I mean that Mr. Marmaduke is as he should be."
"For all that I know to the contrary, he is, sir," returned the housekeeper; "and likewise all friends" Mrs. Myrtle laid such an accent upon "friends" that my mind naturally rushed to the opposite.
"You don't mean to say," said I, "that anything has happened to Sir Massingberd?"
Mrs. Myrtle had no voice to speak, but she nodded a number of times in compensation.
"Is he DEAD?" asked I, very solemnly, for it was terrible to think of sudden death in connection with that abandoned man.
"Wus than dead, sir," returned the housekeeper; "many times wus than dead; Heaven forgive me for saying so. Sir Massingberd is LOST."
"Lost!" repeated I; "how? where?"
"There is only One knows that, Master Peter; but the Squire is not at the Hall, that's certain; he never returned there last night, after he had gone his rounds in the preserves. He spoke with Bradford and two more of the keepers, and bade them keep a good look-out as usual; but he did not come to the watchers in the Home Plantation. He never got so near the house as that; nobody saw him since midnight. Gilmore put out his cigars and spirits as usual for him in his room; but they are untouched. The front-door was not fastened on the inside; Sir Massingberd never came in."
Here I heard Mr. Long calling upon the stairs in a voice very different from his customary cheerful tones, for Mrs. Myrtle.
"Mercy me, I wonder whether there's anything new!" cried she, rising with great alacrity. "As soon as I knows it, you shall know it, Master Peter;" with which generous promise she hurried from the room.