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“I noticed that,” said Sir Thomas. After a while he said: “You think, then, that they must have been coincidences?”

“MUST is a word which intelligent people do not outwear by too constant usage.”

And “Oh—-?” said the knight, and said that alone, because he was familiar with the sparkle now in Borsdale’s eyes, and knew it heralded an adventure for an amateur of the curious.

“I am not committing myself, mark you, Sir Thomas, to any statement whatever, beyond the observation that these coincidences were noticeable. I add, with superficial irrelevance, that Dr. Herrick disappeared last night.”

“I am not surprised,” said Sir Thomas, drily. “No possible antics would astonish me on the part of that unvenerable madman. When I was last in Totnes, he broke down in the midst of a sermon, and flung the manuscript of it at his congregation, and cursed them roundly for not paying closer attention. Such was never my ideal of absolute decorum in the pulpit. Moreover, it is unusual for a minister of the Church of England to be accompanied everywhere by a pig with whom he discusses the affairs of the parish precisely as if the pig were a human being.”

“The pig–he whimsically called the pig Corinna, sir, in honor of that imaginary mistress to whom he addressed so many verses–why, the pig also has disappeared. Oh, but of course that at least is simply a coincidence. . . . I grant you it was an uncanny beast. And I grant you that Dr. Herrick was a dubious ornament to his calling. Of that I am doubly certain to-day,” said Borsdale, and he waved his hand comprehensively, “in view of the state in which–you see–he left this room. Yes, he was quietly writing here at eleven o’clock last night when old Prudence Baldwin, his housekeeper, last saw him. Afterward Dr. Herrick appears to have diverted himself by taking away the mats and chalking geometrical designs upon the floor, as well as by burning some sort of incense in this brasier.”

“But such avocations, Philip, are not necessarily indicative of sanity. No, it is not, upon the whole, an inevitable manner for an elderly parson to while away an evening.”

“Oh, but that was only a part, sir. He also left the clothes he was wearing–in a rather peculiarly constructed heap, as you can see. Among them, by the way, I found this flattened and corroded bullet. That puzzled me. I think I understand it now.” Thus Borsdale, as he composedly smoked his churchwarden. “In short, the whole affair is as mysterious—-“

Here Sir Thomas raised his hand. “Spare me the simile. I detect a vista of curious perils such as infinitely outshines verbal brilliancy. You need my aid in some insane attempt.” He considered. He said: “So! you have been retained?”

“I have been asked to help him. Of course I did not know of what he meant to try. In short, Dr. Herrick left this manuscript, as well as certain instructions for me. The last are–well! unusual.”

“Ah, yes! You hearten me. I have long had my suspicions as to this Herrick, though. . . . And what are we to do?”

“I really cannot inform you, sir. I doubt if I could explain in any workaday English even what we will attempt to do,” said Philip Borsdale. “I do say this: You believe the business which we have settled, involving as it does the lives of thousands of men and women, to be of importance. I swear to you that, as set against what we will essay, all we have done is trivial. As pitted against the business we will attempt to-night, our previous achievements are suggestive of the evolutions of two sand-fleas beside the ocean. The prize at which this adventure aims is so stupendous that I cannot name it.”