Peter looked up from a table littered with manuscript. His face, a moment before rather troubled and stern, relaxed into a friendly smile, although the fingers of one hand still tapped restlessly on a sheet of paper that lay beside him—a cablegram from India which had evidently been the subject of his thoughts at the moment of Sandy's arrival.
"What's the urgent matter? Have you got into a hole and want a friendly haul-out? If so, I'm your man."
Sandy looked down wretchedly at the fine-cut face with its kind eyes and sensitive mouth.
"Oh, don't!" he said hastily, checking the friendly welcome as though it hurt him. "It—it isn't me. . . . It's Nan."
Peter sat quite still, only the hand that held his pen tightened in its grip.
"Nan!" he repeated, and something in the tone of his voice as he uttered the little name seemed to catch at Sandy's heart-strings and sent a sudden unmanageable lump up into his throat.
"Yes, Nan," he answered. Then, with a rush: "She's gone . . . gone away with Maryon Rooke."
The penholder snapped suddenly. Peter tossed the pieces aside and rose quietly to his feet.
"When?" he asked tensely.
"Now—to-day. If they've come to London, they'll be here very soon. They were in his car—I saw them on the London road. . . . And she left a letter for me. . . . Oh, good God, Mallory! Can't you save her—can't you save her?" And Sandy grabbed the older man by the shoulder and stared at him with feverish eyes.