But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph.  They had hardly assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the doorway.

“Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be disturbed until she rang, my lady,” he said.

“And she has not rung?” Millie asked.

“No, my lady.”

Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.

“Miranda!” Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a sharp cry of rebuke.  Then she resumed to Harper.

“I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle.  Will you please, ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us this morning.  We shall start at twelve.”

“Very well, my lady.”

There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round the table.  A queer panic passed from one to the other.  They were awed by the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things.  They waited in silence, like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door.  They held their breath, straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that door.  They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again.  It was followed by a sound of hurrying feet.

Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her heart to still its wild beating.

“My lady!  My lady!  The door’s locked.  I can get no answer.  I am afraid.”

Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair.  But Jenny Prask had more to say.

“The key had been removed.  My lady, I looked through the keyhole.  The lights are still burning in the room.”

“Oh!”

Martin Hillyard had started to his feet.  He remembered another time when the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle’s room in the full blaze of a summer morning.  She was sitting at the writing-table then.  She had been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her.  The full significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel below the Hog’s Back was now revealed to him.  But between that morning and this, there was an enormous difference.  She had opened her door then in answer to the knocking.

“We must get through that door, Lady Splay,” he said.  Sir Chichester was already up and about in a busy agitation.

“Yes, to be sure.  It’s just an ordinary lock.  We shall easily find a key to fit it.  I’ll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will come.”

“Yes, I’ll come,” said Millie quietly.  After her first shock of horror and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the Harpoon, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.

“The rest of you will please stay downstairs,” said Sir Chichester, as he removed the key from the door of the room.  Jenny Prask was not thus to be disposed of.