“What can have become of that American?” he said.  “He knew what hotel you were making for?”

“Oh, yes,” cried the others in chorus.

They laughed.  Quite a cheerful air possessed two members of the little party, at any rate.

“Perhaps he has forgotten the name?” went on Evelyn.

“Americans never forget the names of hotels, or railway stations, or steamers,” said Winter.  “The average Englishman can tell you what will win the Derby, but the average American will be a good deal more accurate concerning next Saturday’s mail steamer....  So, I frankly confess it—­ that man’s prolonged absence supplies a riddle which I can’t answer.  What do you say if we give a look along the front?  He may be shy, though I told the hall porter that any inquirer was to be shown up at once.”

No; Mr. Handyside was not to be seen on Eastbourne’s spacious marine promenade.  A couple of well-dressed men caught sight of Winter, and decided that they had instant and urgent business elsewhere, But he only smiled.  His quarry that day was not the swell mobsman, but much more dangerous game.

Lightning darted from a summer sky when the picnic party returned from Beachy Head in three cars, but without Mrs. Forbes.

Evelyn was hardly anxious at first.  The hall porter informed her who the occupants of the cars were, and she watched the lively and chattering groups forming on the pavement and breaking up again to enter the hotel and dress for dinner.

At last, realizing that her mother was not among them, she singled out a lady whom she knew, and asked for an explanation.  The lady, a Mrs. Montagu, was very much surprised.

“But, my dear Evelyn,” she said, “didn’t you yourself send for your mother?”

The girl blanched.  Some premonition of evil gripped her very heart.

“What do you mean?” she said, and the other woman could not help noting the distress in her voice.

“If you didn’t send, who did?” came the immediate response.  “We were just going to have tea when a gentleman, a stranger, came and asked for Mrs. Forbes.  We saw him arrive in a car which halted at the foot of the path—­ nearly a quarter of a mile away.  Your mother answered, and he said that you were in Eastbourne, and had sent him to bring you to the hotel.  He said the car belonged to a Doctor Somebody, but he himself looked like a foreigner.”

A few others had gathered around, attracted by Evelyn Forbes’s pallor and distress; Winter, too, had drawn near, and it was he who said: 

“Did you see this stranger who brought the message?”

“O yes, plainly,” said Mrs. Montagu.

“Had he a scar down the left side of his face?”

“Yes.”

Then Evelyn Forbes, for the first time in her vigorous young life, fainted.  Her mother was in the power of Wong Li Fu.  All the terrors which imagination had painted in her own behalf were redoubled as to her mother’s fate.  Her brain reeled.  Merciful oblivion came.  Theydon and Winter were just able to catch her before she fell like a log.