On the following day, therefore, Mrs. Quelch at Lawestoft was surprised to find on the breakfast-table _two_ letters in her Benjamin's handwriting. Her surprise was still greater when, on opening them, she found one to be a graphic account of a visit to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative, and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in a manner which boded no good to any one who stayed her progress, started by the next train for Liverpool Street. On reaching home she extracted from the weeping Widger, who had just been spending the last of Benjamin's five shillings, and was far gone in depression and gin and water, that her "good gentleman" had not been home since Thursday night. This was bad enough, but there was still more conclusive evidence that he was up to no good, in the shape of his tall hat, which hung, silent accuser, on the last peg in the passage. Having pumped Mrs. Widger till there was no more (save tears) to be pumped out of her, Mrs. Quelch, still firmly grasping her umbrella, proceeded next door, on the chance that her neighbour, Mrs. Fladgate, might be able to give her some information. She found Mrs. Fladgate weeping in the parlour with an open telegram before her. Being a woman who did not stand upon ceremony, she read the telegram, which was dated from Dieppe and ran as follows: "Monsieur Fladgate here detained for to have smuggle cigars. Fine to pay, one hundred franc. Send money and he will be release." "Oh, the men, the men!" ejaculated Mrs. Quelch, as she dropped into an arm-chair. "They're all alike. First Benjamin, and now Fladgate! I shouldn't wonder if they had gone off together." "You don't mean to say Mr. Quelch has gone too?" sobbed Mrs. Fladgate. "He has taken a shameful advantage of my absence. He has not been home since Thursday evening, and his hat is hanging up in the hall." "You don't think he has been m-m-murdered?" "I'm not afraid of _that_," replied Mrs. Quelch, "it wouldn't be worth anybody's while. But what has he got on his head? that's what I want to know. Of course, if he's with Mr. Fladgate in some foreign den of iniquity, that accounts for it." "Don't foreigners wear hats?" inquired Mrs. Fladgate, innocently. "Not the respectable English sort, I'll bet bound," replied Mrs. Quelch; "some outlandish rubbish, I dare say. But I thought Mr. Fladgate on his Scotch journey." (Mr. Fladgate, it should be stated, was a traveller in the oil and colour line.) "So he is. I mean, so he ought to be. In fact I expected him home to-day. But now he's in p-p-prison, and I may never see him any m-mo-more." And Mrs. Fladgate wept afresh. "Stuff and nonsense!" retorted Mrs. Quelch.