The child must have been expecting it, for, in next to no time, there was her knock on the door.

"Marion," Miss Edge asked, as though Baker had telephoned on her instructions. "When did Mary go to Matron?"

"I couldn't say, ma'am."

"But you told us at breakfast, surely you recollect."

"Yes ma'am."

"When did you see her last then, child?"

"I didn't see her, ma'am."

"You didn't see her?" Edge echoed, an ugly note in her voice. "Oh but, excuse me, you must have. You told us." Marion stood in silence. She looked guilty. "You mean you connived at this disappearance, Marion? Just when my sixth sense had led me to ask you where she was. You say now she never went to Matron?"

"They told me she had, ma'am."

"And who was that, pray?"

"The other girls, ma'am."

"Then you never even saw her this morning?" Miss Baker asked, white about the lips once she found her fears confirmed.

"No ma'am." There was a silence. Edge came away from the window, went right up to the child.

"You can go now, Marion," she said. "But we shall have to see you later about the whole wretched business, once we have got right to the bottom of it. I fear you may not have been quite straight with us, child."

"But I…" the girl began, raising limpid, spaniel's eyes to Miss Edge, and that were filling with easy tears, when the lady broke in on her.

"Yes, you can go, Marion," she repeated. "Perhaps you did not quite catch what I said?"

A call to Matron told them she had not seen Mary since last night.

"If you would manage the Inspector I'll just have a word with Matron, I think," Baker informed Edge.

"I shall get rid of the man," this lady agreed, with decision.

When the sergeant came he mopped his brow.

"Such lovely weather we have had, and it continues," Edge said, as she took him by the hand. "Tell me, would you like a glass of beer after your long ride?" she asked, for she had not reached the position she now held without learning the ways of this world.

"Thank you, ma'am," the sergeant accepted. He sat down before the two desks, one of which lay vacant. His face was traditional, the colour of butcher's meat. When she had ordered his ale over the telephone, she asked, "And how is my friend the Inspector?"

"Ah," the sergeant said. "He was put out, there you are. He asked me to make his excuses, ma'am."

"Yes, the paper work does not grow less, does it?"

"There you are," the man repeated, in agreement. Edge bit her lip with impatience to be rid of him, for she felt there was so little time, and then, at that very instant, a scheme began to form in her mind. "It's not often he gets outside," the sergeant ended.

"Now, this is your beer," Edge announced brightly as one of the juniors on orderly duty carried it in. "Wonders will never cease. They have not forgotten the opener. Time was when a great Place like this brewed its own. You prefer yours in draught, perhaps? But then those days are not missed, not as we are now," she said, with fervour.

He hastily agreed. Behind his big, blank face he wondered once more. He took a pull at the glass. As might have been expected, the beer was flat.

"Which way did you come? It looks so beautiful today, I think," she said.

"By the back," he answered, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief in such a manner that, for a moment, she wondered if it could be to hide a smile. "I saved a half mile," he said.

"Oh so you came along by Mr Rock's, then?" she made a sure guess, at her most affable. "What a wonderful man for his age."

"He is that," the sergeant said.

"And I dare say you saw some of our dear girls," Miss Edge went on. "At their search," she said, then pulled herself up. "Seeking out our decorations," she explained. "You could not be expected to know, of course, but today is our Anniversary, and we are to hold a little jollification for the children. Oh, no-one will come in from outside," she assured him. "Just a small private gathering and, naturally, we have to dress the premises. So then, because we take pride in what has been entrusted to us, I gave the strictest instructions that they were not to cut the blooms where this could make itself felt, because at the present glorious season, down here, to see is to feel, sergeant."

He had a vision of six hundred golden legs, bare to the morning, and said, "Yes, ma'am." At the same time he had not forgotten what had been hinted on the way, and saw one pair of dripping legs.

"Yes," she agreed, "today our routine is disrupted. But that was not why I needed the Inspector."

The sergeant waited.

"No," she said. "The fact is, Miss Baker and I are made really anxious by what we have noticed in the Press these last few weeks. Up and down the country, sergeant, there have been such distressful cases, so horrible, so inhuman we think, because we have discussed the thing, naturally, though not outside these four walls, of course. I refer to all this interference with young girls, sergeant."

Ah, now we are getting somewhere, he thought to himself. Although it was not to be quite what he expected. "Interference madam?" he asked. But she seemed not to know how to proceed.

"Oh hardly anything really serious," she went on. "Though I always maintain the indictable offence is encouraged, or perhaps provoked would be a better word, by the other party." Here she paused once more.

"By the complainant?" he prompted.

"Exactly," she said. "You will realise that it is a little difficult for me to express myself, how delicate. .," she said, leaning back in her chair, smiling at him defiantly. "But we have noticed so many cases, up and down the land, where girls have been stopped by strangers. And here, it so happens, we are particularly vulnerable. I mean by that, not only our old tumble down Park walls, which are a positive invitation to itinerant labour, but our Mission here which, from the very nature of it, focuses attention upon our little Pursuits."

"Tramps," the sergeant broke in, not quite caught up with her.

"Because we are Trustees, you understand," she went on, after a short silence to give him time. "We stand in the shoes of our students' parents, it is a very real trust which the State has put upon us here, and, as Its Servants, we should not leave a stone unturned…" She seemed to search for the right phrase. He watched as she closed her eyes. He waited. "After all, prevention is better than cure," she brought out at last, smiling at him, bright and sharp.

"What exactly did you have in mind, miss?"

"It was more a premonition, sergeant. But Miss Baker and I experienced what we did so acutely that we decided to talk it over with the Inspector. I suppose we felt in need of advice as much as anything. Because we particularly noted in the papers that it always seems to be the older men, I mean of a certain age."

"Have you anyone in view, ma'am?" the sergeant asked. The drift of her remarks had not escaped him.

"But I have just told you," she said, with another bright smile. "Our Park wall that we rightly cannot get the labour to have repaired. Anyone can step over."

"You feel you would like a watch kept?"

"I hope I have more sense of the urgency of the times in which we live," she replied, with a slight show of indignation. "No," she went on, "we are aware how you yourselves are short staffed also. And of course it is not our girls," she said. "In that sense they are above reproach, absolutely. They are hand picked. As you realise, it is a privilege, a reward for preliminary work well done, for them to be sent to us. No," she wound up, leaning slightly forward while at the same time she took her eyes off his face, "to tell you the truth, we did wonder if you might have information of any characters locally."