"It certainly isn't necessary, because I don't suppose you'll be able to do anything, but----" He gave a little groan. "Well, I expect you're right, and after all perhaps you'd better go, and, of course, if you like, take Vi with you; she'll be a companion. I shouldn't wonder--I've a feeling in my bones that there will be a fuss made about Noel Draycott; and if there is, you'd certainly better be out of it. Upon my word, I wish we'd never had this ball; I've a kind of a sort of a feeling that the Easter ball at Avonham is going to bulk rather largely in the public eye; I see myself figuring in the public prints, and I certainly don't want to have you there. I'll wire to Slocock right away." Captain Slocock was the officer in command of the Earl of Cantyre's well-known steam yacht _Sea Bird_. The prophet was justified, there was a fuss; nothing had yet been heard of Mr. Draycott. It became a moot point whether something ought not to have been done in the matter, even in the dead of the night; it might, more than one person in the establishment became presently aware, become a very awkward subject for unpleasant future comment. His lordship's point of view was easy to grasp; there really had been nothing to show that anything serious had happened. Scandal was the thing most to be avoided; if the police had been called in, there would have had to be a scandal, and nothing might have suited Noel Draycott less. There might, his lordship put it, have been a discussion between Noel Draycott and, say, someone else, of a strictly personal kind, in which Draycott might have got the worst of it. It was a most regrettable incident, that such a thing should have occurred at Avonham, on the night of the Easter ball. Mr. Draycott owed an apology to his hosts and their guests; he would be called to a severe account at the very first possible moment. Of course, Major Reith had been under a misapprehension. In the first shock of his surprise at finding the man in such a dreadful condition on the floor, he jumped to the not unnatural conclusion that he was dead, which, though natural, was absurd. Who had ever heard of a dead man picking himself up and taking himself off? Which was what Noel Draycott had done. Where he had taken himself to was another story. He was not at the barracks, as they had learned on the telephone, but then it was hardly likely that he would be there. In that discussion with someone else, he had been pretty badly knocked about; the major's story made that clear. He would doubtless be ashamed of himself; there was probably something not nice at the back of it all. He would probably have preferred to take his broken head somewhere where there was a chance of his wounds being healed without their ever coming to the knowledge of his brother officers. What had to be ascertained was the hiding-place in which he had taken shelter.