‘But, I don’t quite follow—­’

Atherton impetuously declined to allow Mr Lessingham to conclude.

’Of course you don’t quite follow, and you’ll follow still less if you will keep getting in front.  I went upstairs and downstairs, inside and out—­shouted myself hoarse as a crow—­nothing was to be seen of Marjorie,—­or heard; until, as I was coming down the stairs for about the five-and-fiftieth time, I stepped on something hard which was lying in the passage.  I picked it up,—­it was a ring; this ring.  Its shape is not just what it was,—­I’m not as light as gossamer, especially when I come jumping downstairs six at a time,—­but what’s left of it is here.’

Sydney held something in front of him.  Mr Lessingham wriggled to one side to enable him to see.  Then he made a snatch at it.

‘It’s mine!’

Sydney dodged it out of his reach.

‘What do you mean, it’s yours?’

’It’s the ring I gave Marjorie for an engagement ring.  Give it me, you hound!—­unless you wish me to do you violence in the cab.’

With complete disregard of the limitations of space,—­or of my comfort,—­Lessingham thrust him vigorously aside.  Then gripping Sydney by the wrist, he seized the gaud,—­Sydney yielding it just in time to save himself from being precipitated into the street.  Ravished of his treasure, Sydney turned and surveyed the ravisher with something like a glance of admiration.

’Hang me, Lessingham, if I don’t believe there is some warm blood in those fishlike veins of yours.  Please the piper, I’ll live to fight you after all,—­with the bare ones, sir, as a gentleman should do.’

Lessingham seemed to pay no attention to him whatever.  He was surveying the ring, which Sydney had trampled out of shape, with looks of the deepest concern.

’Marjorie’s ring!—­The one I gave her!  Something serious must have happened to her before she would have dropped my ring, and left it lying where it fell.’

Atherton went on.

’That’s it!—­What has happened to her!—­I’ll be dashed if I know!  —­When it was clear that there she wasn’t, I tore off to find out where she was.  Came across old Lindon,—­he knew nothing;—­I rather fancy I startled him in the middle of Pall Mall, when I left he stared after me like one possessed, and his hat was lying in the gutter.  Went home,—­she wasn’t there.  Asked Dora Grayling,—­she’d seen nothing of her.  No one had seen anything of her,—­she had vanished into air.  Then I said to myself, “You’re a first-class idiot, on my honour!  While you’re looking for her, like a lost sheep, the betting is that the girl’s in Holt’s friend’s house the whole jolly time.  When you were there, the chances are that she’d just stepped out for a stroll, and that now she’s back again, and wondering where on earth you’ve gone!” So I made up my mind that I’d fly back and see,—­because the idea of her standing on the front doorstep looking