"I don't know what time it was, but it was after three o'clock, and not long before daylight."
"What kept him up, I wonder?" said Nick, as if to himself, and not for the benefit of the housekeeper. "Must have been worrying over the Filbon matter. Yes, yes, of course, unless," looking up at the woman as if the thought was of but little importance, yet had been suggested by ordinary curiosity, "unless he told you it was something else."
"I asked him where he had been all night," replied the housekeeper, wholly unsuspicious of the detective's design, "and he said that he had been trying to find Luke Filbon, who had robbed him of a large sum of money."
"Did he seem surprised to learn that John Dashwood had not come home?"
"No. He said that John would probably turn up all right."
"And yet he went off to wire Mrs. Dashwood. That shows, does it not, that he must have feared that harm had come to his son-in-law, and that he concealed his feelings in order not to alarm you? That was the act of a considerate man."
There was no hint of sarcasm in tone of voice or expression of face. The housekeeper took the remarks as Nick had meant them to be taken.
"Yes, that must be it," she said, with a sorrowful shake of the head, "for he knows that I think the world of John Dashwood. A finer man never lived."
Nick nodded his head in approval. Then he said: "I want to write a letter, so that when I go back to town it may go out with the next mail. I have used Mr. Leonard's desk before. Will you permit me to use it again?"