Suddenly something I had been told at the club an hour or so before flashed back into my mind. Another club member besides Easterton had, it seemed, become acquainted with Gastrell through Gastrell's calling at the wrong house—by mistake. A coincidence? Possibly. And yet— I sucked meditatively at my pipe. Suddenly the telephone rang. Easterton was speaking. "What!" I exclaimed, in answer to the startling information he gave me. "When did he disappear?" "Where was he last seen?" "No, he has not been here. I haven't seen him since Gastrell's reception." "Oh, yes, I saw you there." "Yes, very extraordinary." "No." "Oh, no." "Good. I'll come to you at once. Are you at Linden Gardens?" "Very well, I'll come straight to the club." Mechanically I hung up the receiver. Curious thoughts, strange conjectures, wonderings, arguments, crowded my brain in confusion. Five days had passed since the date of Gastrell's reception, when I had seen Jack Osborne at supper with the woman he had said he mistrusted. Since that evening, according to what Easterton had just told me, nobody had seen or heard of him. He had not been to his chambers; he had not left any message there or elsewhere; he had not written; he had neither telegraphed nor telephoned. Where was he? What was he doing? Could some misfortune have befallen him? Had he— I did not end the sentence my mind had formed. Instead I went out, hailed a taxi, and in a few minutes was on my way to Brooks's. Outside a house in Grafton Street a group of people stood clustered about the door. Others, on the pavement opposite, stared up at the windows. Two policemen upon the doorstep prevented anyone from entering. Leaning forward as my taxi sped by, I peered in through the open door of the house, then up at the windows, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. Further down the street we passed three policemen walking briskly along the pavement in the direction of the house. "What's the commotion in Grafton Street?" I inquired of my driver as I paid him off at Brooks's. "I've no idea, sir," he answered. "Looks as though there was trouble of some sort." Another fare hailed him, so our conversation ended. I found Easterton awaiting me in a deserted card-room. "This may be a serious affair, Berrington," he said in a tone of anxiety as I seated myself in the opposite corner of the big, leather-covered settee. "Here five days have gone by, and there isn't a sign of Jack Osborne, though he had not told anybody that he intended to absent himself, had not even hinted to anybody that he had any idea of doing so." "You say he has not been seen since Gastrell's reception?" "Not since then—five days ago. The fellows here at the club are getting quite alarmed about him—they want to advertise in the newspapers for news of his whereabouts."