In the first shock of Barrant’s violent apparition and angry questions, Mrs. Pendleton had tried, in a bewildered way, to insist that her niece had not left her room on the previous night.  But now, in her troubled consideration of the new strange turn of events surrounding her brother’s death, she saw that she might have been deceived on this point.  Barrant, for his part, had not the slightest doubt of it when he heard that her belief rested on no stronger foundation than Sisily’s early withdrawal from the dining-room on the plea of fatigue, and the fact that her bedroom door was locked when Mrs. Pendleton returned from her own visit to Flint House.  Sisily’s subsequent flight eliminated any uncertainty about that, and established beyond reasonable doubt her identity with the silent girl who had entered the returning wagonette at the cross-roads.  The coincidence of those two facts had a terrible significance.  Barrant had no doubt that Sisily had gone to her own room early in order to find an opportunity to pay a secret visit to her home, for a purpose which now seemed to stand sinisterly revealed by her disappearance.  He also thought he saw the motive—­that vital factor in murder—­looming behind her nocturnal expedition.  But that was a question he was not inclined to analyze too closely at that moment.  He wanted to know how she had been able to disappear that day without the knowledge of her aunt.

Mrs. Pendleton had a ready explanation of that.  She said that after returning from her visit to the police station that morning she had been engaged with her brother Austin until nearly lunch-time, and when she went up to Sisily’s room she found it empty.  She concluded that her niece had gone out somewhere to be alone with her grief—­she was the type of girl that liked to be alone.  After lunch Mrs. Pendleton had letters to write, and then she had gone to her bedroom and fallen sound asleep till dinner-time, worn out by the shock of her brother’s death, and the sleepless night which had followed it.  When Sisily did not appear at dinner she began to grow uneasy, but sought to convince herself that Sisily might have gone on a char-a-banc trip to Falmouth which had been advertised for that day.  The incongruity of a sad solitary girl like Sisily nursing her grief in a public vehicle packed with curious chattering trippers did not seem to have occurred to her.  But as time passed she grew seriously alarmed, and sent her husband out to make enquiries.

She had sat in the lounge listening with strained ears for the girl’s footsteps until Barrant arrived.

“Has your niece any friends in Cornwall or London, or anywhere, for that matter, who would receive her?” Barrant abruptly demanded.

“I really do not know,” said Mrs. Pendleton.

She wiped the tears from her eyes with a large white handkerchief.  She was overwhelmed by the shock of her niece’s disappearance, and the terrible interpretation Barrant evidently placed upon it.  But Barrant was in no mood to allow for her confused state of mind.