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distressed, so ready to read disaster into the unknown, when there was absolutely nothing to warrant such a gloomy outlook. For a while she was roused to a sense of anger against her uncle; he ought to have more thought for her feelings than to leave her in this painful uncertainty. He must know that his absence would cause anxiety, not only to her, but to everyone in the house. But this spasm of indignant exasperation disappeared when she remembered how exceedingly thoughtful her Uncle John always was in everything concerning her comfort and peace of mind. No, something really serious must have happened to him, or he would have managed to communicate with her by some means or other.
    She ate her dinner in a mood of growing despondency, and began to wonder how she was going to pass the evening. She suddenly remembered that her uncle had, a day or so before, brought back from London a batch of books on spiritualism, and that they were lying on his desk in the study. She decided to bury herself in an easy chair in that comfortable room and spend the time reading. She felt she must detach herself from the present, get absorbed in her subject, and time would fly.
    For a while she read with a lively interest Sir Edward Marshall Hall’s Evidences of Survival from Experiences with Automatic Writing , but the worries and preoccupations of the day had tired her mind, and she soon found that she was reading without concentration. She finally closed her book, and her thoughts reverted to Miss Julia Garford’s remarks about John Thurlow and Dawn Garford.
    Now that she began to consider the matter, Eileen became aware that there was a large part of her uncle’s character and mental life that was hidden from her. It was not that he was unduly secretive, but that she herself had never been sufficiently curious about him. After all, there might be more in village gossip than she had surmised. For all she knew, her uncle might have proposed to Dawn Garford and been accepted. Unlikelier things had happened. He was fifty-five years of age and Dawn, twenty-six, but her uncle was younger physically and mentally than his years. The fact that he had a considerable fortune was one that Dawn, avid for the good things of life and not too romantic in her outlook, would certainly appreciate. No sooner had this thought flashed across Eileen’s mind, than she remembered that she, herself, was the sole beneficiary under her uncle’s will. If her uncle married, he would certainly alter the provisions of that will. She had not considered this point before.
    Her thoughts then fastened on the subject of Clarry Martin’s disappearance. It was very strange that Clarry should have disappeared almost simultaneously with her uncle. They were, so village gossip said, rivals for the hand of Dawn Garford. Could this fact have any bearing on the coincidence? From these musings there suddenly sprang to her mind the thought of murder. Clarry Martin was, according to Julia Garford’s story insanely jealous of her uncle’s attentions to Dawn, but no, she could not think of Clarry Martin in the role of an assassin. Had her uncle any other enemies? The question brought to her memory a remarkable discussion that had taken place between her father and mother about some youthful indiscretion of John Thurlow’s in India. She, herself, was then in her teens, and on the occasion was not thought to be listening too attentively to her parents’ conversation. What that indiscretion was, she had never been able to ascertain definitely, but she realized when she grew older that it savoured strongly of popular sensational fiction. There was something about a Hindu temple, a goddess called Kali, and she had a vague recollection that a beautiful native dancer flitted lightly on an atmosphere of veiled sexual hints across the stage of her parents’ discussion. That dancer’s husband, if she remembered rightly, had been murdered. Eileen had