“All servants are curious,” murmured Mrs. Pendleton.  She shook her head wisely, as one intimating a wide knowledge of their class.

“All curious servants are not murderers,” returned Barrant.  “This man has been in your brother’s service for a long time, has he not?”

“For a great number of years.  Almost ever since Robert returned to England, I think.”

“So Mr. Austin Turold informed me.  Had he any grudge against his master?”

“Thalassa?  I really couldn’t tell you, because I do not know.  But he has a most truculent and overbearing manner—­not at all the kind of manner you expect in a servant, and he seemed to do just what he liked.  I disliked him as soon as I saw him.  I’m sure he looks more like some dreadful old sea pirate than a gentleman’s servant.  I would not have him in my household.”  Mrs. Pendleton set her lips firmly.  “No, not for a single moment.  But I suppose poor Robert was attached to him from long association.”

Barrant nodded in an understanding way.  “Then this man Thalassa must have known your niece from childhood,” he said in a casual tone.  “Was he attached to her, do you think?”

“I know nothing of that.”

“That’s rather a pity,” he said with a gentle shake of the head.  He looked at her knowingly.

“I do not understand you,” she faltered.

“You had grounds for your suspicions of Thalassa—­reasonable grounds.  He must have admitted your niece into the house last night, you know.  I must get it out of him.”

She gave a start, for she saw now where his drift of questions was taking them.  With a sickening sense of horror she realized that her slight suspicions were being used by him to help fashion a case against her own flesh and blood.

“What are you suggesting?” she breathed, with a nervous look.

“Nothing at present,” he said, with a quick realization of the fact that he was in danger of talking too much.  “Can you tell me if your niece is provided with money?”

“My brother gave her twenty-five pounds in bank notes yesterday—­he told me.”

“That is enough to keep her for some weeks.  You are quite sure you cannot form any idea where she has gone?”

“No,” said Mrs. Pendleton coldly, with a belated inward resolve not to be so ready in volunteering information to the police in future.

“I should like to see the room your niece occupied last night,” he said.

That was a search which brought nothing to lights Barrant left the hotel just as little Mr. Pendleton returned to it with an alarmed face and a feeling of personal guilt at his failure to find Sisily.

Barrant passed him with a side glance, his mind full of the problem of the girl’s disappearance.  He left the hotel in a state of thoughtfulness, fully realizing the difficulties of the task which lay before him in tracing Sisily’s movements on the previous night, and discovering where she had flown.  The deeper questions of motive and the inconsequence of some of her actions he preferred to leave till later.  Action, and not mental analysis, was the need of the moment.  Barrant prided himself on being a man of action, and he was also a detective.  The thrill of pursuit stirred in his blood.