"Even if there are many," I burst out--"you have all these policemen here. You have hundreds more. Those houses in the list must all be searched----" They would do what they could, he said. I did not know why they should at the same time speak of doing all they could, and yet should look so hopeless. But I saw that nobody moved. My two companions talked in undertones. The men in uniform still stood in twos and threes. One near a high desk drummed with his fingers on an open book. The Healer folded his thin long hands upon the counter. In that horrible stillness I said suddenly, "Look at the clock!" The clock's hands too were folded, praying people to notice it was midnight. They stirred a little at my voice. They looked at me and at the clock. The inspector said they were waiting for Mrs. Harborough's messenger. The messenger had gone out with a constable to make inquiry at the nearest cab shelter. Why had they not told us that before! My two companions followed me, talking low. * * * * * We were driven to a little wooden house, set close against the curb. Two or three men inside, and one behind an urn was pouring coffee. Yes, yes, a gentleman had "called." Each one there had been questioned. Others, besides, who had been in and out. No one had taken a lady to Lowndes Square that night. The door shut behind us. We were out again, in the street. Two taxi-cabs in the rank, and ours at the curb? Besides our driver and ourselves not a soul afoot, outside the little wooden shelter. Betty--Betty, what am I to do? I looked up at the houses. In almost any one of them must be some good man, who, if he knew, would help me. But the houses were curtained, and dark. The silence of the streets seemed a deeper silence than any the country knows. The only sound, my two companions whispering. "He" would no doubt be waiting for them at Lowndes Square, they said. Could they mean, then, to go home...? Betty--Betty---- I looked up again at the houses--houses of great folk, I felt sure. Officials, perhaps; equerries; people about the Court--people whose names we had often seen in the paper as going here and there with the King and Queen. People who would not be turned back at any time of night if they went to the Palace on an errand of life and death. Should I run along the street ringing at all the bells? I may have made some movement, for Mrs. Harborough took my arm and drew me towards the cab. No, the people in the great houses would be sleeping too far away from those blank doors. Deafness had fallen on the world, and on the houses of good men a great darkness. A light--at last, a light! shining out of a house on a far corner which had been masked by the cab shelter. And people awake there, for a taxi waited at the door--the door of hope. Above it an electric burner made a square of brightness. In that second of tense listening, my foot on the step of the cab, a raised voice reached me faintly.