"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles, passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house--a house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This was pure coincidence?"
"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you mean?"
"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."
"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one. You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"
"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"
Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.
"Can you walk from this house and find her?"
With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.
"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."
"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"
Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy fidelity.
"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"
"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."
"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"
"You suggest no reason for the difference?"
For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia. Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much. I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same expression that had come over her face when he suggested the possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous Wednesday morning.
Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a discreet distance from her mother.
A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed in him.
"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How _could_ he, if he didn't know all along?"