He cursed the crass imbecility by which such a thing could have got into the papers at all. He strode to his house and to his room, crumpled the paper which he was still holding, unfolded it, and then read the news again. There were but a few lines of it: Demaine had disappeared, and the full detective power of London was attempting to solve the mystery of his disappearance. What madness to let such things get out! Why, twenty things might have happened! He might simply have stopped in the house of a friend and not bothered to tell his wife that he was not coming home; he might simply have fallen ill and have been taken to a hospital or to a hotel. What a piece of idiocy to put it into the Press at all! Much as he hated the exercise, he rang to be put through to Demaine House, and heard from Sudie herself, whom he knew but distantly, that her fears had done all. She had sat up for George till nearly five o’clock in the morning; underrating perhaps her husband’s talents, and notably his ability to find his way home, she thought it possible he had fallen a victim to an unscrupulous taxi driver or that any one of a thousand other fates might have befallen him. With too little comprehension of the social forces that build up the society of the Mother Land, Sudie had communicated at once with Scotland Yard, and on learning that her husband had last been seen leaving the House of Commons and walking towards the river, she had taken the unpardonable step of sending messages to all the evening papers in the hope that such publicity would advance the solution of the mystery. It was perfectly damnable! As though the cares of his office were not enough, the Prime Minister found himself upon this Tuesday afternoon with a doubtful and anxious division awaiting him in the evening, with one of his Ministers gone mad, and his successor the subject at the best of a vulgar mystery, and at the worst of a hopeless disappearance. CHAPTER X The phrase “intoxicated with pleasure,” too common in our literature, would most inexactly describe the condition of George Mulross Demaine as he left the Prime Minister’s room upon that Monday midnight. In the first place he was not and never had been intoxicated, and even when he exceeded (as in youth he frequently had) in the matter of wine, spirits, liqueurs and fancy liquids, the effect of such excess had rather been atrophy than intoxication. Nor had he ever felt what poets finely call the “sting of joy.” But he was pleased: he was very pleased. Thoughts that in another more volatile and less substantial brain might have crowded, appeared slowly separated one from another and in a solemn procession. They comforted rather than exhilarated him. First of all there was the £5000 a year: that was something.