Already the long ribbon of road was beginning to be faintly tinged with gray. The dawn was not yet, but night was flitting away before his coming. Save for an occasional policeman and the rumble of heavy carts piled with sweet-smelling vegetables and flowers for Covent Garden, the great street was empty. I passed the Ritz Hotel with a tender thought of one who lay sleeping there, and hurried eastwards. I had nearly got to the Circus when a taxi swung out of the Haymarket and I hailed the man. He was tired and sleepy, had been waiting for hours at some club or other, but I persuaded him, with much gold, to take me, and we buzzed away toward the street of ink. Here was activity enough. The later editions of the morning papers were being vomited out of holes in the earth by hundreds of thousands. Windows were lighted up everywhere as I turned down a side street leading to the river and came to my own offices. I unlocked the door with my pass key and almost immediately I was confronted by Johns, the night-watchman, who flashed his torch in my face and inquired my business. I was pleased to see the man alert and at his post and asked who was in the building. "Only Mr. Benson, Sir Thomas; it's his week for night duty." I went up and very considerably surprised, not to say alarmed, young Mr. Benson, who had the photograph of a lady propped up on a desk before him and was obviously inditing an amorous epistle. I put him through the most searching possible cross-examination, until I was quite sure that he had never telephoned to my flat. I knew him for a truthful, conscientious fellow, without a glimpse of humor or the slightest histrionic talent. Johns, called from below, was equally emphatic. Certainly no taxi had arrived here during the last three hours, nor had William Rolston come near the office. I returned to Piccadilly, utterly baffled and without a single ray of light in my mind. CHAPTER FIVE On the morning of the fourteenth of September I met Captain Pat Moore and Lord Arthur Winstanley at Liverpool Street station. We were all three of us asked to Cerne as guests of that fine old sportsman, Sir Walter Stileman. A special carriage was reserved for us and our servants filled it with luncheon baskets and gun cases. It was almost exactly three months since my eventful night at the Ritz with Gideon Morse, and the disappearance of little William Rolston.