“Henry,” observed Piggy, “was becoming the object of most particular attentions from matchmaking mammas. My wife informs me that his stock has been very high for some months past. Gilt-edged, in fact. I’m afraid there will be a slump as soon as your resurrection is established. Henry, I think, will bear up. Well now, about sending you abroad—I can’t say for certain, but I rather think it could be managed, if you still wish it, you know. I wouldn’t be in a hurry, if I were you, Luttrell, about going abroad, but as to the matter in hand—well, hurry is the word. You’ll find a car outside with Inspector Davison. Take him along. I hope he won’t be needed, but—well—take him along.” CHAPTER XXV Mr. Ember was spending a busy Sunday. As he stood in the empty laboratory, realising Molloy’s defection and all that it involved, there was no change in his impassive face. The web of his plan was broken. Like some accurate machine his brain picked up the loose ravelled threads and wove them into a new combination. Molloy himself was no loss. His place could be filled a dozen times over. As to any harm that he could do, unless he had gone straight to the police, he could be reached—reached and silenced. And Ember knew his Molloy. He would not go straight to the police. If he meant to sell them, he would set about it with a certain regard for appearances. There would be _pourparlers_, some dexterous method of approach which would save his face and leave him an emergency exit. Ember checked over in his mind the four or five places to which Molloy might have retreated. Then there was the money. That they must have; but Molloy, once found, could be scared into giving it up. Ember let his eyes travel around the laboratory. The lists lay upon the bench where Jane had put them not five minutes before. He frowned and picked them up, stared at them, and frowned more deeply still. They had been folded and refolded, doubled into a small package since he had last handled them. Who had done it? The sheets had been smooth from the typewriter when he gave them to Molloy. They had been handled and creased, with the creases that come from tight folding. Had Molloy meant to take them with him, and then at the last moment been afraid? It looked like it. He turned over the pages, counting them. Suddenly his eyes fixed, his fingers tightened their hold. There was a fresh smudge of ink on the top of the fifth page—a smudge so fresh that the blue ink had not yet turned black. That meant two things: Molloy had copied the lists before he left, and he had only been gone an hour or two—that at the outside, probably less. In the moment that passed before Ember laid the papers down, Mr. Molloy received his death sentence as duly and irrevocably as if it had been pronounced by an Assize Judge in scarlet and ermine, white wig and black cap.