“Mrs. Brackenbury went back with a heavy heart. No doubt Mr. Turnour’s sensible letters from Reading recurred to her mind. She had already ascertained from the distracted bride that the Count had taken the strange precaution to keep in his own pocket-book the £80,000, now converted into French and Italian banknotes, and Mrs. Brackenbury feared not so much that he had met with some accident, but that he had absconded with the whole of his girl-wife’s fortune. “The next morning brought but scanty news. No one answering to the Count’s description had met with an accident during the night, or been conveyed to a hospital, and no one answering his description had crossed over to Calais or Ostend by the night boats. Moreover, Hubert Turnour, who presumably had last been in Count Collini’s company, had left Dover for town by the boat train at 1.50 a.m. “Then the search began in earnest after the missing man, and primarily Hubert Turnour was subjected to the closest and most searching cross-examination, by one of the most able men on our detective staff, Inspector Macpherson. “Hubert Turnour’s story was briefly this: He had strolled about on the parade with Count Collini for a while. It was a very blustery night, the wind blowing a regular gale, and the sea was rolling gigantic waves, which looked magnificent, as there was brilliant moonlight. ‘Soon after ten o’clock,’ he continued, ‘the Count and I went back to the Grand Hotel, and we had whiskies and sodas up in my room, and a bit of a chat until past eleven o’clock. Then he said good-night and went off.’ “‘You saw him down to the hall, of course?’ asked the detective. “‘No, I did not,’ replied Hubert Turnour. ‘I had a few letters to write, and meant to catch the 1.50 a.m. back to town.’ “‘How long were you in Dover altogether?’ asked Macpherson carelessly. “‘Only a few hours. I came down in the afternoon.’ “‘Strange, is it not, that you should have taken a room with a private sitting-room at an expensive hotel, just for those few hours?’ “‘Not at all. I originally meant to stay longer. And my expenses are nobody’s business, I take it,’ replied Hubert Turnour, with some show of temper. ‘Anyway,’ he added impatiently, after a while, ‘if you choose to disbelieve me, you can make inquiries at the hotel, and ascertain if I have told the truth.’ “Undoubtedly he had spoken the truth; at any rate, to that extent. Inquiries at the Grand Hotel went to prove that he had arrived there in the early part of the afternoon, had engaged a couple of rooms, and then gone out. Soon after ten o’clock in the evening he came in, accompanied by a gentleman, whose description, as given by three witnesses, _employés_ of the hotel, who saw him, corresponded exactly with that of the Count.