“Indeed, sir?” he replied.  “Nothing very valuable, I hope?”

“I have been robbed of papers,” Tallente said quietly, “which in the wrong hands might ruin me.  Mr. Palliser had a key to that safe.  Have you ever seen it open?”

“Never, sir.”

“When did Mr. Palliser arrive here?”

“On the evening train of the Monday, sir, that you arrived by on the Tuesday.”

“Tell me, did he receive any visitors at all on the Tuesday?”

“There was a man came over from a house near Lynton, sir, said his name was Miller.”

“Have you any idea what he wanted?”

“No certain idea, sir,” Robert replied doubtfully.  “Now I come to think of it, though, it seemed as though he had come to make Mr. Palliser some sort of an offer.  After I had let him out, he came back and said something to Mr. Palliser about three thousand pounds, and Mr. Palliser said he would let him know.  I got the idea, somehow or other, that the transaction, whatever it might have been, was to be concluded on Tuesday night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Robert?” his master enquired.

“Other things drove it out of my mind, sir,” the man confessed.  “I didn’t look upon it as of much consequence.  I thought it was something to do with Mr. Palliser’s private affairs.”

Tallente glanced at the safe.

“I saw this man Miller at the station,” he said, “when I arrived.”

“That would be on his way back from here, sir,” Robert acquiesced.  “I gathered that he was coming back again after dinner in a car.”

“Did you hear a car at all that night?”

“I rather fancied I did,” the man asserted.  “I didn’t take particular notice, though.”

Tallente frowned.

“I am very much afraid, Robert,” he said, “that wherever Mr. Palliser is, those papers are.”

Robert shivered.

“Very good, sir,” he said, in a low tone.

“Any speculations as to that young man’s whereabouts,” Tallente continued thoughtfully, “must necessarily be a matter of pure guesswork, but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong way—­turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of to the right—­he might very easily have fallen over the cliff.”

“The walk is very unsafe in the dark, sir,” Robert acquiesced, looking down at the carpet.

“It was not my intention,” Tallente remarked thoughtfully, “to kill the young man.  A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took him with me to the lookout.  I suppose he was tactless and I lost my temper.  I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that piece of rotten paling, you know, Robert—­”

“I know, sir,” the man interrupted, with a little moan.  “Please don’t!”

Tallente shrugged his shoulders.

“I took him at no disadvantage,” he said coolly.  “He knew how to use the gloves and he was twenty years younger than I. However, there it is.  Backwards he went, all legs and arms and shrieks.  And with him went the papers he had stolen.—­At twelve o’clock to-night, Robert, I must go down after him.”