I replied in the affirmative, and explained how she had left her home in Cadogan Gardens to go to Hendon to meet me.
'I see. She was lost sight of between Cadogan Gardens and Hendon,' he exclaimed, adding a memorandum to what he had already written down. 'Well, sir,' he said. 'We'll do our best, of course. But—you don't think Miss Lethmere has disappeared intentionally—eh?'
And he looked at me inquiringly with his dark, serious eyes.
'Intentionally! No why?'
'Well, because we get many young ladies reported missing in the course of a year, and many of them we find, on inquiry, have hidden themselves purposely, for their own private reasons, quarrels, run-away matches, hiding from angry parents, and such-like causes. I tell you,' he added, 'some of the cases give us quite a lot of trouble and annoyance.'
'I'm quite sure that Miss Lethmere is not hiding herself purposely,' I declared quickly. 'There can be no object in her doing so.'
'No. Not as far as you are aware, sir,' the inspector replied very politely. 'But neither you nor I can always follow the trend of the feminine mind,' he added with a faint smile. 'You, of course, do not suspect the existence of any motive which would lead her to disappear intentionally. Nobody in such circumstances as yours, ever does. Do you happen to know whether she took any money with her when she left home?'
'Mulliner, Lady Lethmere's maid, says that just before going out Miss Lethmere glanced in her purse,
