was on the train as well.”

“Dear God. Is she all right? Did you bring her back to London too?”

“She’d already been taken away by the time I found David. I expect the doctors were working on her shoulder. It was dislocated. I left a message for her to let me know if there was anything more I could do.”

“That was kind.” And then feminine curiosity took over. “Do you know where she was going?” She answered her own question. “Was it to Inverness?”

He hadn’t considered that possibility. She might have been traveling alone after all. He found he wasn’t as sorry as he ought to be that her journey was interrupted. “She never said. There was no time to talk about anything but finding help for the injured.”

“No, of course not. I’ll call on her later in the week.”

He left then and drove to the Yard.

But there was no news of Walter Teller, and no one had located Charlie Hood.

Frustrated, Rutledge shut himself in his office and turned his chair to face the window.

Walter Teller, he thought, had had to survive unimaginable difficulties in the field. He had had to be clever enough as well to deal with unexpected problems facing his flock, not to speak of coping with doubters and those who clung stubbornly to their own gods, even to the point of threatening him and his converts. The climate would have been against him, the long journeys in and out of his mission post would have been trying. He’d been responsible for the lives of his converts and would have had to keep their faith fresh in spite of tribulations and setbacks—a failed harvest, an infestation of insects, plagues and natural disasters, and war, even on a tribal scale.

Then what could possibly have frightened the man between his London bank and his house in Essex?

Hamish, his voice loud in the small office, said, “His son.”

And that son had been Walter Teller’s first concern when he finally reached his house. Yet he had walked away from Harry as well as his wife hardly more than a week later.

Had his dead father insisted that the heir go away to school at such an early age? Rutledge had been told that, but there was no proof. He wished he’d thought to ask Leticia Teller about it. Wanting to go against his dead father’s wishes was hardly reason enough to have a breakdown of the magnitude that had assailed Teller.

There was the letter from the mission society.

But Teller hadn’t got ill immediately after receiving it.

Rutledge turned and reached for his hat.

It was time to find the Alcock Society and ask a few questions.

He discovered through sources at the Yard that the Society had a small house outside of Aylesford, Kent, and he drove there without waiting for an appointment.

Aylesford, with its handsome narrow bridge and narrower twisting streets, was a pretty little town on the Medway. The house Rutledge was seeking was within sight of the church. It was a Tudor building almost as narrow as it was tall.

He knocked at the door and was received by an elderly man in rusty black, his long face wrinkled with age and exposure to the sun.

Rutledge identified himself and explained his errand.

Mr. Forester, it seemed, was the secretary of the Society and handled all correspondence for it. The Alcock, he informed Rutledge, had been founded in the early part of the nineteenth century, and since that time had been very well supported by patrons who believed in the Society’s work and its attempt to bring enlightenment to the forgotten parts of the world. Victoria herself had visited the tiny headquarters before she had succeeded to the throne, and above the hearth there was a small painting of the event done by Forester’s predecessor. He pointed it out proudly and invited Rutledge to admire it.

He asked Rutledge to join him for tea, and they sat in the parlor on chairs Rutledge was certain the great Elizabeth would have recognized, with straight backs and seats hard as iron, discussing the Society’s aims and goals and record.

“And Walter Teller?”

“He was always reliable, a steady man who was able to find common ground with the local people and work with them in projects designed to better their lives. A school, for instance, or a new well, or a market that attracted commerce to the area. Very practical things, you might say, but through them, people could be persuaded to find worth in Christianity and turn their thoughts to