This was an awful moment. Jimmy's detective scheme had not
included any answer to this inevitable question. The silence was
unbroken till Jimmy spoke.

"He said he was going to bed because he had a headache." And
this, of course, was true.

"This poor Gerald!" said Mademoiselle. "Is it that I should mount
him some supper?"

"He never eats anything when he's got one of his headaches,"
Kathleen said. And this also was the truth.

Jimmy and Kathleen Went to bed, wholly untroubled by anxiety
about their brother, and Mademoiselle pulled out the bundle of
letters and read them amid the ruins of the simple supper.

"It is ripping being out late like this," said Gerald through the soft
summer dusk.

"Yes," said Mabel, a solitary-looking figure plodding along the
high-road. "I do hope auntie won't be very furious."

"Have another bun," suggested Gerald kindly, and a sociable
munching followed.

It was the aunt herself who opened to a very pale and trembling
Mabel the door which is appointed for the entrances and exits of
the domestic staff at Yalding Towers. She looked over Mabel's
head first, as if she expected to see someone taller. Then a very