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 CHAPTER XII

REVEALS AN ASTOUNDING FACT

EEKS passed, but alas! the problem remained unsolved. I became plunged in the darkest depths of despair.

The hue-and-cry had been raised all over the kingdom. Sir Herbert Lethmere had offered a reward for any information concerning his daughter, but nobody came forward with any really tangible declaration.

The hard indisputable fact was that she had gone down those front-door steps in Cadogan Gardens and disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed her.

For me, those weeks were weeks of keen, hourly anxiety, weeks of grief and breathless forebodings.

The woman I loved so dearly had been snatched from me, and now I felt that I had no further object in life. Indeed, I had no heart to make any further experiments to perfect my Zeppelin-destroyer, and though Teddy, in his old cheery way, tried to console me and endeavoured to get me down to Gunnersbury, I always firmly refused to go. The place was now hateful to me. My keenness had vanished. Now 120