He anticipated difficulty, and approached the stage-door keeper with a five-pound note and broken English. He was, it seemed, Prince Nicolas Something-or-the-other-vitch. He was oh! so great a friend of the great, the incomparable Vanda—even a relation. He _must_, it was of an imperativeness, see her. Further, the good keeper of the door really must accept this so little piece of paper. The good keeper did; then proceeded laboriously to explain that the Vanda was not in the theatre. Hadn’t been there at all that day. _And_ there ’adn’t been half a row about it, neither! She had wired to say she couldn’t appear. Why? Gawd perhaps knew; certainly nobody else did. When would she reappear? The keeper of the door reely couldn’t say. P’r’aps to-morrer. P’r’aps never. Good-night to _you_, sir. Anthony went to his flat, surprised his man, and ordered a drink, a bath, fresh clothing, a drink, and supper. At the meal, his hunger surprised him. Then he remembered that since the lightest of lunches he had eaten nothing. Having made up the deficiency, he lit a cigar, sat in a chair by the open window and read through, not once but many times, the typed report of the inquest. Somewhere a clock struck two. Anthony put down the report, clasped his head with his hands, and plunged into thought. Presently he found his mind to be wandering, strictly against orders—wandering in a direction forbidden. He swore, got to his feet, and crossed to the writing-table. At this he employed himself with pen and paper for more than an hour. At last he put down his pen and read through what he had written. The clock struck four. He finished his reading, said: “H’mm! Those blasted gaps!” and went to bed. 3 He had barely two hours’ sleep, for by a quarter past six he was breaking his fast. At twenty minutes past seven he was driving his car slowly through London. This morning he took the journey to Marling slowly: the pointer of his speedometer touched eighteen as he left the outskirts of town, and remained there. For Anthony was thinking. For the first third of the journey his thoughts were incoherently redundant. They were of a certain scene in which A. R. Gethryn had lost his temper; had behaved, in short, abominably, and this to the one person in the world for whose opinion he cared. It cost him an effort greater than might be supposed to wrench his thoughts out of this gloomy train, but at last he succeeded. This puzzle of his—some of it fitted now, only there were several idiotic pieces which, unfitted, made nonsense of the rest. He flogged his unwilling brain for the rest of the journey. He backed the Mercedes into the garage of the Bear and Key at twenty-five minutes to ten. By five minutes to the hour he was walking with his long, lazy stride up the winding drive of Abbotshall.