Superintendent Figgis appeared to be trying to recollect something.

“Was there a thunderstorm on Thursday?” he asked.

“The most severe I ever remember,” said Mr. Taynton.

“It had slipped my memory,” said this incompetent agent of justice.

But a little thought enabled him to ask a question that bore on the case.

“He travelled then by Lewes and not by the direct route?”

“Presumably.  He had a season ticket via Lewes, since our business often took him there.  Had he intended to travel by Hayward’s Heath,” said Mr. Taynton rather laboriously, as if explaining something to a child, “he could not have intended to get out at Falmer.”

Mr. Figgis had to think over this, which he did with his mouth open.

“Seeing that the Hayward’s Heath line does not pass Falmer,” he suggested.

Mr. Taynton drew a sheet of paper toward him and kindly made a rough sketch-map of railway lines.

“And his season ticket went by the Lewes line,” he explained.

Superintendent Figgis appeared to understand this after a while.  Then he sighed heavily, and changed the subject with rather disconcerting abruptness.

“From my notes I understand that Mr. Morris Assheton ascertained that the missing individual had left his flat in London on Thursday afternoon,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Assheton is a client of ours, and he wished to see my partner on a business matter.  In fact, when Mr. Mills was found not to have returned on Thursday evening, he went up to London next day to see him, since we both supposed he had been detained there.”

Mr. Figgis looked once more mournfully at his notes, altered a palpably mistaken “Wednesday” into Thursday, and got up.

“The matter shall be gone into,” he said.

* * * * *

Mr. Taynton went straight from here to his office, and for a couple of hours devoted himself to the business of his firm, giving it his whole attention and working perhaps with more speed than it was usually his to command.  Saturday of course was a half-holiday, and it was naturally his desire to get cleared off everything that would otherwise interrupt the well-earned repose and security from business affairs which was to him the proper atmosphere of the seventh, or as he called it, the first day.  This interview with the accredited representative of the law also had removed a certain weight from his mind.  He had placed the matter of his partner’s disappearance in official hands, he had done all he could do to clear up his absence, and, in case—­but here he pulled himself up; it was at present most premature even to look at the possibility of crime having been committed.