On that day when I called at Lennox Street and received no answer to my ringing I stepped back from the door and looked up at the house again. Little trace of the accident now remained. The broken mulberry branch had been neatly sawn off and the smaller branches trimmed. The blinds were drawn, the French window clamped up, and quite obviously there was nobody there. This, as I have said, surprised me, since, even if Esdaile had gone away without letting me know, I had certainly expected to find Rooke.

Then, as I walked down the path again, a thought struck me. Rooke, if I remembered rightly, ought to be getting married just about then—ought as a matter of fact to have been married three days before. I had had no news of this. True, he might simply have neglected to inform me, but I did not think this likely. Was he married? Suddenly I found myself wondering and doubting.

In the King's Road, to which I walked, a blue and white telephone sign hanging outside a grocer's shop caught my eye. I walked into the shop. I have a good many friends at the Chelsea Arts, and one or other of them ought to be able to tell me something about Rooke.

I got through at the second or third name I asked for. It was Curtis. He asked me to go on to the Club, but I told him that I couldn't spare the time, and he next wanted to know where I was speaking from.

"Then you're hardly a stone's-throw from him," Curtis replied. "He's back in his old rooms in Jubilee Place."

I was on the point of asking Curtis whether Rooke was married, but already I had a divination. If he was not, to ask why he was not would only make talk, and, if he was at home, I could ascertain for myself at little more trouble than walking across the road. I thanked Curtis, hung up the receiver, and turned my steps to Jubilee Place.

I say I had a divination already. At the very outset of this book I told you that the Case affected a number of people in various and curious ways and byways, and I was now beginning to think that the descent of that parachute on Esdaile's roof had left not one single member of our group unaffected. I must remind you again that at that time I actually knew far less than I have already told you; but except by collation, rearrangement and boiling down I could not have set down these facts at all. I had, for example, seen Esdaile's shocked expression on discovering that the stranger who had come down on his roof was none other than his friend Chummy Smith, but up to that time I had not set eyes on that unruffled young criminal himself. I had guessed what this discovery must presently mean to Joan, but was unaware of that headstrong dash of Mollie's up to London, and her lagging return to Santon. I had heard Hubbard's fantastic speculations as to the nature of the mysterious apparatus Esdaile kept in his cellar, but did not know that both Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham had actually been down in the cellar. I had enjoyed the spectacle of a rising barrister unconsciously frustrating the aims of a coroner's jury, but had had to pump Hanson for even the meagerest scraps of information about the subject of that inquest. And twice or thrice I had unblushingly lied to a Chesterfield of the Saloon Bars, but without a suspicion when I had done so that this very person, seeing another prime actor in our Case descending a ladder, had had the curiosity to know what made his pocket so lumpy and the deftness of hand to ascertain.

So I had begun to look with a good deal of apprehension at our Case. The beastly thing was like an egg, that hatched out one creeping thing after another. And, as I paused at the end of a long concrete-floored passage and knocked at Rooke's door, I wondered if Rooke would give me news of still another.