When Leslie had traced Druze to that little Devonshire village, and wrote, with no great hope, to the vicar, she hardly expected so voluminous and conscientious a record of the family history; for he even sent photographs of tombstones which marked the departed Druzes of the Eighteenth Century! If she had only read this before, she thought, she could not have been shocked by the discovery that “Arthur Druze” was a woman; for apparently there was no male member in that family, except the semi-lunatic father and a remote uncle who for some reason wasn’t called Druze at all. She read through carefully, took down an atlas and a gazetteer from her bookshelf, and finally locked letter and data in the drawer. Her work was by no means finished for the night, though she was dropping with weariness. She had a number of letters to write. Before she had left the office, Mr. Coldwell had given her the names and addresses of a dozen people who would be helpful to her in the search she was making. At eleven o’clock they phoned from Scotland Yard to tell her that there was no news of Elizabeth. Mrs. Inglethorne, confronted as she was with a long term of imprisonment, possibly of penal servitude, refused any information about the child, except that she had gone to “her aunt’s.” Lucretia brought her coffee. The girl had an irritating trick of expressing her disapproval by audible tut-tuts, and twice did she tut-tut into the room and out again. At last she extinguished all the lights in the room save the table lamp. “You’ve got to go to bed, miss,” she said firmly. “I’ll have you on my hands if I’m not careful. And what about this young girl?” Leslie rose stiffly from her desk, gathered the letters together and stamped them. “She is not coming to-night,” she said. “Post these, Lucretia. I’ll wait for you to return and then you can go to bed.” She heard the door open and guessed, by the cold draft that swept up the stairs, that Lucretia had followed her usual practice of leaving the door ajar while she went to the nearest pillar-box, which was some distance from the flat. It was part of the night’s routine that Lucretia should take the letters; almost a ritual that Leslie should stand in the open doorway of her sitting room until she heard the girl return. The maid could not have been gone half a minute before the street door below closed softly. She heard the gentle thud of it. “Is that you, Lucretia?” she called down into the dark hall. There was no reply.