What the various ladies who had spent the night at Avonham thought when their presence was desired in Lady Cantyre's boudoir, and they found spread out upon a table an amazing assemblage of triumphs of the jeweller's art, and the countess told them that story about the dream and the bag, was not quite clear. Because, in telling her tale, the countess made it plain, not only that criticism was not invited, but also that questions would be resented, and, more, not answered.

When each lady was requested to choose her own property there ensued an animated scene. It was a regrettable fact that discussion actually arose as to who was the owner of certain trinkets. There were three diamond brooches; three ladies had lost a diamond brooch; the question arose as to which of those brooches belonged to each of them; before it was solved some very undesirable things had been said, and worse had been hinted. Nor was that the only instance of the kind; there were a couple of diamond pendants over which two ladies nearly came to blows. As one of them was unmistakably much the better of the two, it is difficult to evade the conclusion that one of them must have been a conscious liar, and, it is to be feared, even more than that.

The countess, when her guests would let her, was content to look on and smile; only when she could not help it did she essay the part of peacemaker. Although the choosing of each one's property ought to have been the simplest thing in the world, it would seem, when the task of selection was done, as if no one lady was on the best of terms with any other; a fact on which it is inconceivable that the countess had calculated as likely to prevent any undesirable discussion of her story of the dream.

"They can talk as much as they like about it afterwards," the countess had said to her husband, "but they won't have a chance of talking to me; because you and I are going for a yachting cruise which will occupy us all the spring and summer."

"What! Aren't you going to spend the season in town?"

"I am not."

"But you've had the house done up, and--no end!"

"Rupert, my health will not permit it. You are going to wire to your captain man to have the yacht ready to-morrow. I am going to see Sir James Jeffreys, and he is going to order me on board at once, because I must have sea air, and Violet Forster is coming with us."

"Is she--is that because that ankle of hers must have sea air too?"

"Surely you must be aware that there is nothing so restful to an injured ankle as the sort of life one leads on board a yacht. Please send your wire, or shall I?"

This conversation took place before the lady and gentleman had yet quitted their own apartment; he was dressed, and she had dismissed her maid. When she said that about the wire he began to snap his thumb-nail against his teeth, which was a trick he had when he was worried.

"Aren't you forgetting one thing? It's all very well for you to have a dream about that blessed bag, but I can't have a dream about that fellow Draycott. I can't start off yachting while that's in the wind."

The lady was standing, with her hands behind her back, looking down with a contemplative air at the toe of her tiny shoe as it peeped from under the hem of her dress.

"I don't see why not. Our Easter ball has not been, in all respects, the success I had hoped it would be, and usually is; but I don't see what is to be gained by your hanging about while somebody is looking into that very unpleasant affair. Indeed, it seems in itself to be a sufficient reason why you should go yachting."

The gentleman was still worriedly clicking his thumb-nail.

"It's all very well for you to talk, but things are not going to be so easy for me as they've been for you. I tell you I can't dream about a bag; I don't at all suppose that I shall be able to get away with anything like decency--not what you would call get away--for, at any rate, some days to come."

"Very well, then Violet and I will go alone; we will chaperone each other; and you will join us when you can. I presume you don't suggest that it is necessary that I should stay?"

His lordship pulled a rueful face.

"It certainly isn't necessary, because I don't suppose you'll be able to do anything, but----" He gave a little groan. "Well, I expect you're right, and after all perhaps you'd better go, and, of course, if you like, take Vi with you; she'll be a companion. I shouldn't wonder--I've a feeling in my bones that there will be a fuss made about Noel Draycott; and if there is, you'd certainly better be out of it. Upon my word, I wish we'd never had this ball; I've a kind of a sort of a feeling that the Easter ball at Avonham is going to bulk rather largely in the public eye; I see myself figuring in the public prints, and I certainly don't want to have you there. I'll wire to Slocock right away."

Captain Slocock was the officer in command of the Earl of Cantyre's well-known steam yacht Sea Bird.

The prophet was justified, there was a fuss; nothing had yet been heard of Mr. Draycott. It became a moot point whether something ought not to have been done in the matter, even in the dead of the night; it might, more than one person in the establishment became presently aware, become a very awkward subject for unpleasant future comment.

His lordship's point of view was easy to grasp; there really had been nothing to show that anything serious had happened.

Scandal was the thing most to be avoided; if the police had been called in, there would have had to be a scandal, and nothing might have suited Noel Draycott less. There might, his lordship put it, have been a discussion between Noel Draycott and, say, someone else, of a strictly personal kind, in which Draycott might have got the worst of it. It was a most regrettable incident, that such a thing should have occurred at Avonham, on the night of the Easter ball. Mr. Draycott owed an apology to his hosts and their guests; he would be called to a severe account at the very first possible moment.

Of course, Major Reith had been under a misapprehension. In the first shock of his surprise at finding the man in such a dreadful condition on the floor, he jumped to the not unnatural conclusion that he was dead, which, though natural, was absurd. Who had ever heard of a dead man picking himself up and taking himself off? Which was what Noel Draycott had done.

Where he had taken himself to was another story. He was not at the barracks, as they had learned on the telephone, but then it was hardly likely that he would be there. In that discussion with someone else, he had been pretty badly knocked about; the major's story made that clear. He would doubtless be ashamed of himself; there was probably something not nice at the back of it all. He would probably have preferred to take his broken head somewhere where there was a chance of his wounds being healed without their ever coming to the knowledge of his brother officers. What had to be ascertained was the hiding-place in which he had taken shelter.

And here something a trifle awkward cropped up; it seemed possible that he had never been either at Avonham or in that part of the country before. Then, in his state, at that hour of the night, for what quarter could he have set out, and how?

The presumption was that he had got out of the window, and shut it after him, which was in itself to presume a good deal; but as it seemed impossible that he could have gone wandering about the house--they had searched it from cellar to basement, to make sure that he was not hidden in it somewhere--he could have gone no other way. But after he had got out of the window, what then? In his then state, in the darkness, in a strange place, for what goal could he have been aiming?

The obvious answer seemed to be, none. He could not have had any cut-and-dried scheme formulated in his brain. The probability was that he had gone wandering, aimlessly, on. Then, in that case, he could scarcely have gone far; not beyond the park which extended for vast spaces about the house; he would never have found the way, even if he had been able to go the distance.

The conclusion therefore was that Noel Draycott must be somewhere within the precincts of the park, so search parties were sent off in all directions to look for him. There were quite a number of houses in the park; inquiries were made at each of these without result. One small fact did leak out, if it could be called a fact. At one of the keepers' cottages, a small child, a girl of eleven or twelve, declared that she had been awakened in the night by the noise made by a motor-car. If the child's tale was true, then it must have been after half-past three in the morning, probably after four. Her father had been kept up by the ball at the house; he had had something to do with expediting the departing guests. It was half-past three when he went home; the child was then awake, had spoken to him. She said that after her father had left her she fell asleep, and was disturbed by the motor-car; the cars and carriages, she said, had been waking her up all through the night. No one could trace that motorcar, whose it was. At that hour what could it have been doing there? The last vehicle had borne away the latest guests long before then. No one seemed to have observed the hour, but it was probably about that time that Major Reith had found Noel Draycott lying on the floor--to lose him directly afterwards. Had the belated motor-car, which that small girl asserted she had heard, anything to do with the loss?

It was not an easy question to answer.

The problem which the Earl of Cantyre, and in a lesser degree, his friend, had to solve, was, what was to be done? Should they wait for news of Noel Draycott, emanating probably from himself, or should communication be made with the police? The latter all the parties seemed to be most unwilling to do. It meant publicity. The news that the police had been summoned to Avonham would be flashed all over England inside an hour. It was just the spicy sort of tale the public would like. "Strange Occurrence in a Nobleman's Mansion": the earl could see that sort of headline staring at him from the principal news-page of a dozen different journals. "The Avonham Mystery"--that was the kind of title which some inspired journalist would fit to a commonplace, vulgar, sordid incident.

No, thank you. His lordship decided that he would not risk that sort of thing until compelled by circumstances. He would have inquiries set on foot, in a quiet way, in every possible direction; if nothing came of them it would be time to speak to the police.

One small, yet curious occurrence did, however, induce in him a momentary qualm of doubt as to whether it was really the wisest course which he was pursuing.

They had been talking in the hall--the amount of talk which was got through at Avonham that morning was beyond credibility. The earl was just marching off to his own particular sanctum, wishing with all his heart that the people would go, and that there might be peace, when he saw in the hand of a bronze figure which stood on a pedestal--an envelope. It was so placed that he could not help but notice it; as he came along it caught him full in the eye. He had passed that figure only a minute or two before; the envelope had not been there then, or he would certainly have seen it. He took it from the fingers of the outstretched hand. It was inscribed, in Roman letters which had been formed with a soft pen, "To the Earl of Cantyre."

He glanced around; no one was in sight who seemed likely to have put it there. It struck him, even in that moment of irritation, as a little odd. He tore it open. Within was a sheet of his own notepaper. On it, again in Roman letters, formed with the same soft pen, was written:

"Who stole the Ditchling diamonds?

"Sydney Beaton.

"Who killed Noel Draycott?

"Sydney Beaton.

"If in doubt apply for information to Violet Forster."

His lordship had but time to get a cursory glance at these singular questions and answers, when his wife, coming along with the Duchess of Ditchling beside her, snatched the piece of paper from his hand; it was done with a laugh, but it was none the less a snatch.

"My dear boy," she cried, "what have you got there which makes you pull such faces?"

She glanced at the paper she had captured--and her countenance was changed. Something was flashed to each other by the married couple's two pairs of eyes. Then the countess crushed the sheet of paper in her hand, and, without a word to her husband, went on with the duchess.