“Well now, think. They were English Members of Parliament, and therefore presumably pretty well to do. They probably had businesses somewhere, and residences in a suburban district. What does all that mean? Respectability. Imagine to yourself the appalling weight of respectability involved in the possession of a wife, an aunt, a sister, a business, investments, and a seat in Parliament. Can’t you fancy the poor fellows coming to find it all perfectly intolerable; saying to each other: ‘Hang it, let’s get off and run loose for a while’? I don’t say I’m right. I can’t be sure, because I don’t know the men, and I didn’t see the women; but what I’m offering you is an intelligible explanation. What sort of women were they? What were they like?” “I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything particular about them. They were just ordinary women.” “There you are,” said Lord Manton. “It’s your ordinary, well-behaved woman who drives a man perfectly frantic if he has any spirit in him. I couldn’t live with an ordinary woman for three months at a stretch. Look at my daughter, for instance. How long do you suppose I could stand her? Certainly not three months, not two months. I’m at the end of my tether after a six weeks’ visit to her. And I’m not married to her. I haven’t got to be very close to her. I haven’t got to see her in a red dressing-gown combing her hair. I haven’t got to listen to the noise she makes when she’s washing her teeth. You don’t understand these things because you’re not married. Very likely you never will understand them, because Miss Blow’s not an ordinary woman----” “She is not,” said Mr. Goddard. “But these two poor fellows,” said Lord Manton, “had got to do with ordinary women. They had to give their opinions on new hats, had to listen to stories about the things which the servants did or didn’t do. Of course they bolted.” “I wish to goodness they’d have bolted out of some other district, then, if they had to bolt. Why should they come here? You’d think it would be much more convenient to run away from a place like London than from Clonmore. But I don’t believe they have bolted.” “They can’t have got lost. The thing’s absurd on the face of it. Take a single point in addition to all those that you’ve made already. Take their bicycles. A man might accidentally lose himself, but his bicycle couldn’t possibly get lost. He must leave it on the side of the road somewhere, and wherever he leaves it you’re sure to find it. You can get rid of a bicycle on purpose, though even that’s not so easy. Sinking it in the sea is about the only way I can imagine of effectually disposing of it. But you can’t lose it and yourself. Nobody could lose both himself and a bicycle unless he did it on purpose.” “But----” said Mr. Goddard.