Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him dumbly.

“Phew!  That’s a stunning girl. . .  Why do you want to sit on that chair?  It’s uncomfortable!”

“I wasn’t going to sit on it.”  Renouard walked slowly to the window, glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead of raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor’s head.

“Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes.  You should have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner.”

“Don’t,” said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned right round to look at his back.

“You push your dislike of young Dunster too far.  It’s positively morbid,” he disapproved mildly.  “We can’t be all beautiful after thirty. . . .  I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor.  He appeared to be interested in the silk plant—­if only as a change from the great subject.  Miss Moorsom didn’t seem to mind when I confessed to her that I had taken you into the confidence of the thing.  Our Willie approved too.  Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his blessing.  All those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I told them that you’ve led every sort of life one can think of before you got struck on exploration.  They want you to make suggestions.  What do you think ‘Master Arthur’ is likely to have taken to?”

“Something easy,” muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth.

“Hunting man.  Athlete.  Don’t be hard on the chap.  He may be riding boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks away to the devil—­somewhere.  He may be even prospecting at the back of beyond—­this very moment.”

“Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub.  It’s late enough in the day for that.”

The Editor looked up instinctively.  The clock was pointing at a quarter to five.  “Yes, it is,” he admitted.  “But it needn’t be.  And he may have lit out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden—­ say in a trading schooner.  Though I really don’t see in what capacity.  Still . . . "

“Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window.”

“Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can see your face.  I hate talking to a man’s back.  You stand there like a hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself.  I tell you what it is, Geoffrey, you don’t like mankind.”

“I don’t make my living by talking about mankind’s affairs,” Renouard defended himself.  But he came away obediently and sat down in the armchair.  “How can you be so certain that your man isn’t down there in the street?” he asked.  “It’s neither more nor less probable than every single one of your other suppositions.”

Placated by Renouard’s docility the Editor gazed at him for a while.  “Aha!  I’ll tell you how.  Learn then that we have begun the campaign.  We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up and down the land.  And what’s more we’ve ascertained definitely that he hasn’t been in this town for the last three months at least.  How much longer he’s been away we can’t tell.”