His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.

The page containing the formula was gone!

Violet now saw her problem.

II

There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that page 13 was not there.  In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one so numbered was not to be found.  Page 14 met the eye on the top of the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in between, or anywhere else.

Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure occurred?  No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt to do so, though everybody started to look for it.

But where look?  The adjoining small room offered no facilities for hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper.  Bare walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all that was to be seen in this direction.  Nor could the room in which they then stood be thought to hold it, unless it was on the person of some one of them.  Could this be the explanation of the mystery?  No man looked his doubts; but Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling, stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red burning hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone present: 

“I demand to be searched—­at once and thoroughly.”

A moment’s silence, then the common cry: 

“We will all be searched.”

“Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?” asked their perturbed host.

“Very sure,” came the emphatic reply.  “Indeed, I was just going through the formula itself when I fell asleep.”

“You are ready to assert this?”

“I am ready to swear it.”

Mr. Cornell repeated his request.

“I demand that you make a thorough search of my person.  I must be cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion,” he gravely asserted, “or how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow.”

After that there was no further hesitation.  One and all subjected themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen.  But this effort was as futile as the rest.  The lost page was not found.

What were they to think?  What were they to do?

There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must be made towards the recovery of this important formula.  Mr. Cornell’s marriage and Mr. Spielhagen’s business success both depended upon its being in the latter’s hands before six in the morning, when he was engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on an early steamer.

Five hours!

Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer?  No, he was as much at sea as the rest.