And about two hundred yards off on the sands Audrey made out a moving figure, which at that distance did in fact seem to have vague appendages that might have resembled a bag and a fiddle case.  But the atmosphere of the night was deceptive, and the figure as it approached resolved itself into three figures—­a black one in the middle of two white ones.  A girl’s coarse laugh came down the wind.  It could not conceivably have been the laugh of any girl who went into the shopping street to buy bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes or tennis balls.  But it might have been—­it not improbably was—­the laugh of some girl whose mission was to sell such things.  The trio meandered past, heedless.  Mr. Spatt said no word, but he appreciably winced.  The black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy.  As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament.

“I’m afraid it’s not much use looking any longer,” said Mr. Spatt weakly.  “He—­he may have gone back to the house.  Let us hope so.”

At the chief garden gate of the Spatt residence they came upon Miss Nickall, trying to open it.  The sling round her arm made her unmistakable.  And Miss Nickall having allowed them to recover from a pardonable astonishment at the sight of her who was supposed to be exhausted and in bed, said cheerfully: 

“I’ve found him, and I’ve put him up at the Excelsior Hotel.”

Mrs. Spatt had related the terrible episode to her guest, who had wilfully risen at once.  Miss Nickall had had luck, but Audrey had to admit that these American girls were stupendously equal to an emergency.  And she hated the angelic Nick for having found Musa.

“We tried first to find a cafe,” said Nick.  “But there aren’t any in this city.  What do you call them in England—­public-houses, isn’t it?”

“No,” agreed Mr. Spatt in a shaking voice.  “Public-houses are not permitted in Frinton, I am glad to say.”  And he began to form an intention, subject to Aurora’s approval, to withdraw altogether from the suffrage movement, which appeared to him to be getting out of hand.

As they were all separating for the night Audrey and Nick hesitated for a moment in front of each other, and then they kissed with a quite unusual effusiveness.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really liked her,” said Audrey to herself.

What Nick said to herself is lost to history.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE GARDEN

The next morning, after a night spent chiefly in thought, Audrey issued forth rather early.  Indeed she was probably the first person afoot in the house of the Spatts, the parlour-maid entering the hall just as Audrey had managed to open the front door.  As the parlour-maid was obviously not yet in that fullness and spruceness of attire which parlour-maids affect when performing their mission in life, Audrey decided to offer no remark, explanatory or otherwise, and passed into the garden with nonchalance as though her invariable habit when staying in strange houses was to get up before anybody else and spy out the whole property while the helpless hosts were yet in bed and asleep.