Robert drove back to Milford with his mind full of this new possibility. It was no solution to their predicament, but it might be a lifeline.
In the office he found Mr. Ramsden waiting for him; long, grey, lean, and dour.
"I came to see you, Mr. Blair, because it wasn't a thing that could be said over the telephone very well."
"Well?"
"Mr. Blair, we're wasting your money. Do you happen to know what the white population of the world is?"
"No, I don't."
"Neither do I. But what you're asking me to do is to pick this girl out of the white population of the world. Five thousand men working for a year mightn't do it. One man might do it tomorrow. It's a matter of pure chance."
"But it always has been that."
"No. In the first days the chances were fair. We covered the obvious places. The ports, the airports, the travel places, the best known 'honeymoon' places. And I didn't waste your time or money in any travelling. I have contacts in all the big towns and in a lot of the smaller ones, and I just send them a request saying: 'Find out if such and such a person stayed at one of your hotels, and the answer is back in a few hours. Answers from all over Britain. Well, that done, we are left with a small proposition called the rest of the world. And I don't like wasting your money, Mr. Blair. Because that is what it will amount to."
"Do I understand that you are giving up?"