"What a horrid idea!" exclaimed Blanche.
"Now comes the question—can we manage to hunt her out, and get her away from the house, without Varick knowing?"
"But why shouldn't he know?" asked Blanche hesitatingly.
"Look at him," said the doctor impressively. And Blanche, glancing quickly across the room, was struck by Varick's look of illness.
"There's no reason for telling him anything about it," she admitted. "But hadn't we better wait till after dinner before doing anything?"
"Perhaps we had."
Dinner was a curious, uncomfortable meal; even Sir Lyon and Helen Brabazon felt the atmosphere charged with anxiety and depression.
Miss Burnaby alone was her usual placid, quietly greedy self. She had expressed suitable regret at all that had happened, but most of the party realized that she had not really cared at all.
When the ladies passed through into the white parlour, Blanche slipped away. She got hold of her firm ally, the butler, and explained in a very few words what she thought had better be done. Accompanied by Pegler, they went into every room, and into every nook and cranny of the house, upstairs and down—but they found no trace of any alien presence.
Miss Pigchalke, so much was clear, had vanished as quietly and silently as she had come.