“I thought perhaps you might have heard from her or about her, through some mutual friend,” remarked Kennedy, carefully concealing under his nonchalance what I knew was working in his mind—­a belief that, after all, the old attachment had not been so dead as the Gilberts had fancied.

“No, not a breath, either before this sad occurrence or, of course, after.  Believe me, if I could add one fact that would simplify the search for Georgette—­ah, Miss Gilbert—­ah—­I would do so in a moment,” replied Lawton quickly, as if desirous of getting rid of us as soon as possible.  Then perhaps as if regretting the brusqueness with which he had tried to end the interview, he added, “Don’t misunderstand me.  The moment you have discovered anything that points to her whereabouts, let me know immediately.  You can count on me—­provided you don’t get me into the papers.  Good-night, gentlemen.  I wish you the best of success.”

“Do you think he could have kept up the acquaintance secretly?” I asked Craig as we walked up the avenue after this baffling interview.  “Could he have cast her off when he found that in spite of her parents’ protests she was still in his power?”

“It’s impossible to say what a man of Dudley Lawton’s type could do,” mused Kennedy, “for the simple reason that he himself doesn’t know until he has to do it.  Until we have more facts, anything is both possible and probable.”

There was nothing more that could be done that night, though after our walk we sat up for an hour or two discussing probabilities.  It did not take me long to reach the end of my imagination and give up the case, but Kennedy continued to revolve the matter in his mind, looking at it from every angle and calling upon all the vast store of information that he had treasured up in that marvellous brain of his, ready to be called on almost as if his mind were card-indexed.

“Murders, suicides, robberies, and burglaries are, after all, pretty easily explained,” he remarked, after a long period of silence on my part, “but the sudden disappearance of people out of the crowded city into nowhere is something that is much harder to explain.  And it isn’t so difficult to disappear as some people imagine, either.  You remember the case of the celebrated Arctic explorer whose picture had been published scores of times in every illustrated paper.  He had no trouble in disappearing and then reappearing later, when he got ready.

“Yet experience has taught me that there is always a reason for disappearances.  It is our next duty to discover that reason.  Still, it won’t do to say that disappearances are not mysterious.  Disappearances except for money troubles are all mysterious.  The first thing in such a case is to discover whether the person has any hobbies or habits or fads.  That is what I tried to find out from the Gilberts.  I can’t tell yet whether I succeeded.”

Kennedy took a pencil and hastily jotted down something on a piece of paper which he tossed over to me.  It read: