Tom Pargeter heard her out with obvious impatience. But still his varnish of good breeding so far lasted that he muttered a word or two of gratitude for the trouble she had taken. Then he turned to Laurence Vanderlyn. "Surely _you_ don't think anything has happened to her, Grid?" he asked, nervously. "Now I come to think of it, she was a fool not to take one of the cars. Then we should have had none of this worry. I've always said the Paris cabs weren't safe. What d'ye think we had better do? We can't start out and make a round of all the hospitals--the idea's absurd!" Waiting a moment, he added dismally, "It's clear I can't take that twelve-twenty train." He walked over to one of the windows, and drummed with his fingers on the pane. Although Madame de Lera did not understand a word he said, Pargeter's attitude was eloquent of how he had taken the astounding news, and she looked at him with angry perplexity and pain. She said something in a low voice to Vanderlyn; as a result he walked up to Pargeter and touched him on the shoulder. "Tom," he said, "I'm afraid something ought to be done, and done quickly. Madame de Lera suggests that we go to the Prefecture of Police; every serious accident is, of course, always reported there at once." The other turned--"All right," he said, sullenly, "just as you like! But I bet you anything that after we have taken all that trouble, we shall come back to find Peggy, or news of her, here. You don't know her as well as I do! I don't believe she's had an accident; I daresay you'll laugh at me, Grid, but all I can say is that I don't _feel_ she's had an accident. Take my word for it, old man, there's nothing to be frightened about. Why, you look quite pale!" There came the distant sound of a telephone bell. "There!" he cried, "I expect that _is_ Peggy, or news of her. What a bore it is having three telephones in a house!" He left the room, and a moment later they heard him shouting to his butler. Vanderlyn turned to Madame de Lera. "He doesn't believe that Mrs. Pargeter has had an accident," he said, quietly, "you must not judge him too harshly." He added, after a moment, "I think you must know, Madame de Lera, that Mrs. Pargeter's husband has always been lacking in imagination." Her only answer was a shrug of her shoulders. VI. Once a year the newspapers of each great capital publish, among other statistics, a record of the disappearances which have occurred in their midst during the preceding twelve months. These disappearances are not counted by tens or by hundreds, but by thousands; and what is true of every great city is in a very special sense true of Paris, the human Cloaca Maxima of the world. There, the sudden vanishing, the obliteration as it were, of a human being--especially of a foreigner--arouses comparatively little surprise or interest among those whose weary duty it is to try and find what has become of the lost one.