Everything was just a little wrong: the windows the wrong size by half a foot, wrongly placed by not much more; the doorway the wrong width, and the flight of steps the wrong height. The total result was that instead of the bland contentment of its period the house had a hard stare. An antagonistic, questioning stare. As he walked across the courtyard to the unwelcoming door Robert knew what it reminded him of: a dog that has been suddenly wakened from sleep by the advent of a stranger, propped on his forelegs, uncertain for a moment whether to attack or merely bark. It had the same what-are-you-doing-here? expression.

Before he could ring the bell the door was opened; not by a maid but by Marion Sharpe.

“I saw you coming,” she said, putting out her hand. “I didn’t want you to ring because my mother lies down in the afternoons, and I am hoping that we can get this business over before she wakes up. Then she need never know anything about it. I am more grateful than I can say to you for coming.”

Robert murmured something, and noticed that her eyes, which he had expected to be a bright gipsy brown, were actually a grey hazel. She drew him into the hall, and he noticed as he put his hat down on a chest that the rug on the floor was threadbare.

“The Law is in here,” she said, pushing open a door and ushering him into a drawing-room. Robert would have liked to talk to her alone for a moment, to orientate himself; but it was too late now to suggest that. This was evidently the way she wanted it.

Sitting on the edge of a bead-work chair was Hallam, looking sheepish. And by the window, entirely at his ease in a very nice piece of Hepplewhite, was Scotland Yard in the person of a youngish spare man in a well-tailored suit.

As they got up, Hallam and Robert nodded to each other.

“You know Inspector Hallam, then?” Marion Sharpe said. “And this is Detective-Inspector Grant from Headquarters.”

Robert noticed the “Headquarters,” and wondered. Had she already at some time had dealings with the police, or was it that she just didn’t like the slightly sensational sound of “the Yard”?

Grant shook hands, and said:

“I’m glad you’ve come, Mr. Blair. Not only for Miss Sharpe’s sake but for my own.”

“Yours?”

“I couldn’t very well proceed until Miss Sharpe had some kind of support; friendly support if not legal, but if legal so much the better.”

“I see. And what are you charging her with?”

“We are not charging her with anything—” Grant began, but Marion interrupted him.

“I am supposed to have kidnapped and beaten up someone.”

“Beaten up?” Robert said, staggered.

“Yes,” she said, with a kind of relish in enormity. “Beaten her black and blue.”

“Her?”

“A girl. She is outside the gate in a car now.”

“I think we had better begin at the beginning,” Robert said, clutching after the normal.

“Perhaps I had better do the explaining,” Grant said, mildly.

“Yes,” said Miss Sharpe, “do. After all it is your story.”

Robert wondered if Grant were aware of the mockery. He wondered a little, too, at the coolness that could afford mockery with Scotland Yard sitting in one of her best chairs. She had not sounded cool over the telephone; she had sounded driven, half-desperate. Perhaps it was the presence of an ally that had heartened her; or perhaps she had just got her second wind.

“Just before Easter,” Grant began, in succinct police-fashion, “a girl called Elisabeth Kane, who lived with her guardians near Aylesbury, went to spend a short holiday with a married aunt in Mainshill, the suburb of Larborough. She went by coach, because the London-Larborough coaches pass through Aylesbury, and also pass through Mainshill before reaching Larborough; so that she could get off the coach in Mainshill and be within a three-minute walk of her aunt’s house, instead of having to go into Larborough and come all the way out again as she would have to if she travelled by train. At the end of a week her guardians—a Mr. and Mrs. Wynn—had a postcard from her saying that she was enjoying herself very much and was staying on. They took this to mean staying on for the duration of her school holiday, which would mean another three weeks. When she didn’t turn up on the day before she was supposed to go back to school, they took it for granted that she was merely playing truant and wrote to her aunt to send her back. The aunt, instead of going to the nearest call-box or telegraph office, broke it to the Wynns in a letter, that her niece had left on her way back to Aylesbury a fortnight previously.