"You do not think that—that under some terrible hallucination, the result of his long illness—you don't think that he has committed suicide?"
"No, Lady Jocelyn," answered the detective, decisively, "there is nothing further from my thoughts now."
"Thank Heaven for that!"
"And now, my lady, may I ask if you'll be kind enough to let me see Mr. Dunbar's valet, and to leave me alone with him in these rooms? I may pick up something that will help me to find your father. By the bye, you haven't a picture of him—a miniature, a photograph, or anything of that sort, eh?"
"No, unhappily I have no portrait whatever of my father."
"Ah, that is unlucky; but never mind, we must contrive to get on without it."
Laura rang the bell. One of the superb footmen, the birds of paradise who consented to glorify the halls and passages of Maudesley Abbey, appeared in answer to the summons, and went in search of Mr. Dunbar's own man—the man who had waited on the invalid ever since the accident.
Having sent for this person, Laura bade the detective good morning, and went away through the vista of rooms to the other side of the hall, to that bright modernized wing of the house which Percival Dunbar had improved and beautified for the granddaughter he idolized.
Mr. Dunbar's own man was only too glad to be questioned, and to have a good opportunity of discoursing upon the event which had caused such excitement and consternation. But the detective was not a pleasant person to talk to, as he had a knack of cutting people short with a fresh question at the first symptom of rambling; and, indeed, so closely did he keep his companion to the point, that a conversation with him was a kind of intellectual hornpipe between a set of fire-irons.
Under this pressure the valet told all he knew about his master's departure, with very little loss of time by reason of discursiveness.