“Good God!” remarked Jack.  And there was silence.

Dick broke it.

“Well, it seems to me we’re rather in a hole.”

“But it’s preposterous,” burst out Jack again.  “Here’s poor old Frank, simply breaking his heart, and here are we perfectly ready to do anything we can—­why, the chap must be in hell!”

“Look here, Mr. Parham-Carter,” said Dick softly.  “What about your going round to his house and seeing if he’s in, and what he’s likely to be doing to-day.”

“He’ll be at the factory till this evening.”

“The factory?”

“Yes; he’s working at a jam factory just now.”

A sound of fury and disdain broke from Jack.

“Well,” continued Dick, “(May I take a cigarette, by the way?), why shouldn’t you go round and make inquiries, and find out how the land lies?  Then Kirkby and I might perhaps hang about a bit and run up against him—­if you’d just give us a hint, you know.”

The other looked at him a moment.

“Well, perhaps I might,” he said doubtfully.  “But what—­”

“Good Lord!  But you’ll be keeping your promise, won’t you?  After all, it’s quite natural we should come down after his letter—­and quite on the cards that we should run up against him....  Please to go at once, and let us wait here.”

In a quarter of an hour Mr. Parham-Carter came back quickly into the room and shut the door.

“Yes; he’s at the factory,” he said.  “Or at any rate he’s not at home.  And they don’t expect him back till late.”

“Well?”

“There’s something up.  The girl’s gone, too. (No; she’s not at the factory.) And I think there’s going to be trouble.”

CHAPTER VI

(I)

The electric train slowed down and stopped at the Hammersmith terminus, and there was the usual rush for the doors.

“Come on, Gertie,” said a young man, “here we are.”

The girl remained perfectly still with her face hidden.

The crowd was enormous this Christmas Eve, and for the most part laden with parcels; the platforms surged with folk, and each bookstall, blazing with lights (for it was after seven o’clock), was a center of a kind of whirlpool.  There was sensational news in the evening papers, and everyone was anxious to get at the full details of which the main facts were tantalizingly displayed on the posters.  Everyone wanted to know exactly who were the people concerned and how it had all happened.  It was a delightful tragedy for the Christmas festivities.

“Come on,” said the young man again.  “They’re nearly all out.”

“I can’t,” moaned the girl.

Frank took her by the arm resolutely.

“Come!” he said.

Then she came, and the two passed out together into the mob waiting to come in.

“We shall have to walk,” said Frank.  “I’m sorry; but I’ve got to get home somehow.”