Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/319

 son's, lost, and enquiring their way—that is, they enquired it from him. They were then at the back of the new colliery works. And that's the last we've heard of them."

"They're lost!" said Mrs. Patello. She made a gesture of her hand towards the room they had just left. "Death!" she muttered. "Death all round—it's a judgment!"

Wedgwood made no reply to that: sentimental reflection was not to his taste. He went downstairs again and told the Superintendent what he had just heard.

"All of a piece with what I know of Janet Clagne," he concluded. "She seems to have been a schemer all her life. But the thing is—where are those two? It's getting on to forty-eight hours since they were seen or heard of!"

"They've come to grief somehow, somewhere," said the Superintendent. "And with all this thickness of snow it may be days before they're found. However, we've heard nothing yet from the men who went up to search round the new colliery. The man who came to me said that he'd told them of a short cut across there, and it's struck me that they may have come to grief amongst the workings. For instance, I know there were trial pits sunk here and there—I saw them myself one time when I was up