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180 “Where has she been this evening?”

“She’s been down here talking with Tremaine most of the time—but I say—hold on—what ails the fellow?” he demanded, staring after the other as he bounded up the stairs. “Well, that beats me!”

He was still staring, when Tremaine appeared at the landing and came down, a packet of letters in his hand.

“I want to put these in the bag,” he said, “so they’ll get off by the early mail.”

“It’s on the rack out there,” Delroy replied, and the other went past him into the outer hall. He was back in a moment.

“That’s a good evening’s work,” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. “But what’s the matter? You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”

“Drysdale came in just now looking as though he’d seen one, all nerves and raw flesh—and stalked upstairs as mad as a hornet about something.”

“Ah,” said Tremaine, with just the flicker of an eyelash, “and yet one would have thought that a walk through the silence of the night would calm his nerves. There comes the rain!”

There was a hiss, a flash, and a great crash of thunder split the firmament apart and shook the house to its foundations. They could hear the rain dashing in sheets against the windows.

“That’s a storm for sure; listen to the wind. Drysdale got in just in time. But I never saw him like that before; something extraordinary must have happened to him. He’s been out of humour for a day or two. I wonder, now, if he was caught in that steel crash?