Probably there is something significant about the fact that Small did not leave the vicinity of his office until seven fifteen o’clock, when he was due at home by half past six. What happened to him after he had left his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment with his wife? That something turned up to change his plan is obvious. Whether he merely encountered some one and talked longer than he realized, or whether something arrested him that had a definite bearing on his disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to be the reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of man lightly to neglect his agreements, particularly those of a domestic kind. Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when her husband failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew he had been going through a busy day, and she reasoned that probably something pressing had come up to detain him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient and telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited two hours longer before she telephoned to the home of John Doughty’s sister. She found her husband’s secretary there and was assured that Doughty had been there all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty said his employer had left the theater at five thirty o’clock, and that he knew no more. He could not explain Small’s absence from home, but took the matter lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got ready. At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s various theaters in eastern Canada, asking for her husband. In the course of the next twenty-four hours she got responses from all of them. No one had seen Small or knew anything about his movements. Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting. Mrs. Small did not go to the police; neither did she employ private detectives until later. For two weeks she evidently waited, believing that her husband had gone off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of his intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of the secret of his absence took the same attitude. It was explained later that there was nothing unprecedented about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt for some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and self-centered individual. He had gone off before in this way and come back when he got ready. He might have gone to New York suddenly on some business. Probably he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared this view, and her reasons for so doing developed a good deal later. In fact, she refused for months to believe that anything had befallen her husband, and it was only when there was no remaining alternative that she changed her position.