Langler did not answer, but was listening, one could see, attentively.
"Then," said Miss Emily, "I say that three tourists at the Calf's Head is one thing, and Robinson's disappearance is another thing; and my theory is that these strangers have kidnapped Robinson."
"But with what motive?" asked Langler, glancing sharply at her.
"Because," she answered, while the nerves of her face screwed up into a little energy of shrewdness—"because he was beautiful."
We were silent at this, till Langler remarked: "ah, there you are hardly convincing."
"I suppose not," she replied. "But what other reason? There was nothing special about Robinson except that one thing, his beauty, and that is how I feel. Find out some reason why one English and two foreign tourists should need to kill or capture a specially handsome man and you solve the mystery of Robinson."
Langler answered nothing more, and we spoke of other matters. He afterwards said that he would be absent during most of the day, and, as some letter-writing kept me from going with him, I saw him ride down the course of the brook and vanish behind the arches of the abbey.
He returned before dinner, and some hours later, when the house was asleep, we two were down by the lake's brim, the night murky and autumnal, but we could just see some moor-hen or wild-fowl briskly breast the waters, like boats in a choppy channel, moored, yet seeming to move forward, as when the moon is flying through cloud.
I asked Langler if he had been able to do anything for the captive, Father Max Dees; he puffed at his pipe several times before replying, and then said: "Father Max Dees is becoming too interesting, Arthur—so much so that he threatens to overwhelm my interest in all life outside himself. How if I tell you that this man, so remote from me and mine, speaking with me from afar by a bird, now seems connected in some way with the disappearance of Robinson?"
"It sounds queer," I said.