“Perhaps there will be a letter from him at Couttet’s,” said Chayne, and the two men walked through the streets to the hotel.  There was no letter, but on the other hand there was a telegram.  Chayne tore it open.

“Yes it’s from Lattery,” he said, as he glanced first at the signature.  Then he read the telegram and his face grew very grave.  Lattery telegraphed from Courmayeur, the Italian village just across the chain of Mont Blanc: 

“Starting now by Col du Geant and Col des Nantillons.”

The Col du Geant is the most frequented pass across the chain, and no doubt the easiest.  Once past its great ice-fall, the glacier leads without difficulty to the Montanvert hotel and Chamonix.  But the Col des Nantillons is another affair.  Having passed the ice-fall, and when within two hours of the Montanvert, Lattery had turned to the left and had made for the great wall of precipitous rock which forms the western side of the valley through which the Glacier du Geant flows down, the wall from which spring the peaks of the Dent du Requin, the Aiguille du Plan, the Aiguille de Blaitiere, the Grepon and the Charmoz.  Here and there the ridge sinks between the peaks, and one such depression between the Aiguille de Blaitiere and the Aiguille du Grepon is called the Col des Nantillons.  To cross that pass, to descend on the other side of the great rock-wall into that bay of ice facing Chamonix, which is the Glacier des Nantillons, had been Lattery’s idea.

Chayne turned to the porter.

“When did this come?”

“Three days ago.”

The gravity on Chayne’s face changed into a deep distress.  Lattery’s party would have slept out one night certainly.  They would have made a long march from Courmayeur and camped on the rocks at the foot of the pass.  It was likely enough that they should have been caught upon that rock-wall by night upon the second day.  The rock-wall had never been ascended, and the few who had descended it bore ample testimony to its difficulties.  But a third night, no!  Lattery should have been in Chamonix yesterday, without a doubt.  He would not indeed have food for three nights and days.

Chayne translated the telegram into French and read it out to Michel Revailloud.

“The Col des Nantillons,” said Michel, with a shake of the head, and Chayne saw the fear which he felt himself looking out from his guide’s eyes.

“It is possible,” said Michel, “that Monsieur Lattery did not start after all.”

“He would have telegraphed again.”

“Yes,” Michel agreed.  “The weather has been fine too.  There have been no fogs.  Monsieur Lattery could not have lost his way.”

“Hardly in a fog on the Glacier du Geant,” replied Chayne.

Michel Revailloud caught at some other possibility.

“Of course, some small accident—­a sprained ankle—­may have detained him at the hut on the Col du Geant.  Such things have happened.  It will be as well to telegraph to Courmayeur.”