At the best of times Whitbury Junction cannot be described as an attractive spot, with its three long platforms, flanked on either hand by sidings with their usual array of cattle-trucks and, apparently derelict, third-class coaches. An uninspiring collection of faded posters, imploring the weary traveller to hasten at once to Ostend or the Cornish Riviera and a row of battered milk-cans embellish the platforms; and the porters, elderly men of pessimistic habit, take even the arrival of the London train with complete lack of enthusiasm. At seven o’clock on a chilly March morning the Junction is at its worst, and Sir Edward Kean, alighting somewhat stiffly from his first-class carriage after a night of mingled boredom and discomfort, eyed his surroundings with marked disapproval. The fact that he would have over an hour to wait before taking the local train to the little station of Staveley Grange did not serve to cheer him, and he was entirely unprepared for the apparition of Cynthia Bell, the last person he desired to see under the circumstances, waiting for him on the platform. There was a hint of shyness in her greeting. Sybil Kean’s distinguished husband was one of the few people of whom she stood in awe and she not only felt responsible for his presence at an unearthly hour at this dreary spot, but was quite aware that, but for his wife’s persuasion, he would not have made the journey at all. It was this knowledge that had decided her to meet the train and see him first alone, in the hope of winning his sympathy and inducing him to take more than a cursory interest in John Leslie’s affairs. The sight of his dark, inscrutable face and thin-lipped, relentless mouth sent her courage into her boots and she felt pitifully young and very helpless as she hurried to meet him. “I wanted to see you and thank you, Sir Edward,” she began rather breathlessly. “Sybil told me you were coming down on purpose. . . .” In spite of his annoyance Kean was touched by her distress. “It seemed better to look into things at once,” he said kindly. “Sybil said you were anxious to see me.” “I wanted to ask your advice. There’s something I’m worried about and no one seems to know in the least what’s going to happen or what one ought to do. It’s the waiting that’s so hard. It makes one imagine things. They haven’t even said they suspect John yet, but they behave all the time as if they did and they’ve searched the farm as if they expected to find something. Meanwhile one hangs about. . . .” She was getting almost incoherent and Kean could see that she was on the verge of tears and was holding them back with difficulty.