For a few moments he stood fuming and glaring with angry eyes and bent brows at nothing in particular, while debating with himself what his next step ought to be. Evidently the first thing to do was to ascertain why the Tower was shut up and what had become of Rigg and his daughter. After considering the matter for a little space, he said aloud: “Nixon will be pretty sure to know. I’ll go and question him.” Like Rigg, Nixon was another pensioned dependent of the house of Clare, and together with his wife, much younger than himself, filled the post of lodge-keeper at the main entrance to Withington Chase. Across the park tramped the Baronet, a very unusual thing for him to do. The old lodge-keeper was at home, and it did not take Sir Gilbert long to elicit all that Nixon had to tell. It appeared that Martin Rigg had gone down to Yorkshire to attend the funeral of his only brother, and that his daughter had accompanied him. As to when they might be expected back, Nixon knew nothing. “Do you happen to know,” said Sir Gilbert, “whether Rigg has had anyone staying with him at the Tower of late—a visitor of any kind, I mean?” Nixon shook his head. “Not to my knowledge, Sir Gilbert.” “And you are sure you heard nothing about any stranger being there?” “I’m quite certain on that score, Sir Gilbert. And either Martin, or Dulcie would have been sure to speak of it if there had been.” As the Baronet walked back to the Chase he knew not what to think. So powerfully had his imagination been worked upon by the belief, which by this time had grown almost to a conviction, that his son was at the root of the mystery of the Grey Monk, and that, of all men, Rigg was the one to whom he must look to supply him with the key, that his mood was one of bitter disappointment. After luncheon he told Lady Pell all about his morning’s errand and its result. In her own mind her ladyship had little or no faith in her kinsman’s conviction that the Grey Monk was none other than John Alexander Clare, restored to life after some all but miraculous fashion when there was every reason for supposing him to have died twenty long years before. She was not a believer in the improbable, although, if questioned, she would have felt bound to admit that even she had known cases where incidents of the most startling kind had evolved themselves out of lives to all seeming the most commonplace and prosaic.