“We have finished, sir,” he said to the Superintendent.

Mr. Figgis turned to the lawyer, who was looking rather fixedly at what the other man had in his hand.

“My document may be among those,” he said.

Mr. Figgis handed them to him.  There were two envelopes, both addressed to the missing man, one bearing his name only, some small torn-up scrap of paper, and three or four private letters.

“Is it among these?” he asked.

Mr. Taynton turned them over.

“No,” he said, “it was—­it was a large, yes, a large blue paper, official looking.”

“No such thing in the flat, sir,” said the second man.

“Very annoying,” said the lawyer.

An idea seemed slowly to strike Mr. Figgis.

“He may have taken it to London with him,” he said.  “But will you not look round?”

Mr. Taynton did so.  He also looked in the waste-paper basket, but it was empty.

So he went back to make ready to receive his guests, for the little party.  But it had got dark; this “document” whatever it was, appeared to trouble him.  The simple step he had contemplated had not led him in quite the right direction.

The Superintendent with his colleague went back into the sitting-room on the lawyer’s departure, and Mr. Figgis took from his pocket most of his notes.

“I went to the station, Wilkinson,” he said, “and in the lost luggage office I found Mr. Mills’s bag.  It had arrived on Thursday evening.  But it seems pretty certain that its owner did not arrive with it.”

“Looks as if he did get out at Falmer,” said Wilkinson.

Figgis took a long time to consider this.

“It is possible,” he said.  “It is also possible that he put his luggage into the train in London, and subsequently missed the train himself.”

Then together they went through the papers that might conceivably help them.  There was a torn-up letter found in his bedroom fireplace, and the crumpled up envelope that belonged to it.  They patiently pieced this together, but found nothing of value.  The other letters referred only to his engagements in London, none of which were later than Thursday morning.  There remained one crumpled up envelope (also from the paperbasket) but no letter that in any way corresponded with it.  It was addressed in a rather sprawling, eager, boyish hand.

“No letter of any sort to correspond?” asked Figgis for the second time.

“No.”

“I think for the present we will keep it,” said he.

* * * * *