"How do you mean?" Morriston asked.
"Left the hotel at nine last night and has never turned up since," Kelson said with an air of telling an amusing story. "Poor Host Dipper is taking it quite tragically, notwithstanding the satisfactory point in the case that the egregious Henshaw's elaborate kit still remains in his unoccupied bedroom."
"Do you mean to say he never came back all night?" Miss Morriston asked.
"Never," Kelson assured her. "Old Dipper came to us, half asleep, at four o'clock to ask whether he was justified in locking up the establishment."
"And nothing has been seen or heard of the man since," Gifford put in.
"That is queer," Morriston said, as though scarcely knowing whether to take it seriously or otherwise. "Now I come to think of it I don't recollect seeing anything of the man after quite the first part of the evening. Did you, Painswick?"
"No, can't say I did," Painswick answered.
"And," observed Kelson, "he was not a man to be easily overlooked when he was on show. I missed him, not altogether disagreeably, after the early dances."
"What is the idea?" Edith Morriston inquired. "Is there any theory to account for his disappearance?"
"No," Kelson answered, "unless a discreditable one. Gone off at a tangent."