two miles off our beds."

"Well, then, how is it Nick's hairbrushes are on the window-sill there,
where she put them when she went to bed? I can see them quite plain. This
is the side street--what's-its-name? There's the wall over there at the
end. Don't you remember--it's a corner house. This is the side of it."

"I believe you're right," admitted Miss Ingate. "What can that man be doing
there?"

They plainly saw him open the gate and disappear down the area steps.

"It's a burglar," said Audrey. "This part must be a regular paradise for
burglars."

"More likely a detective," Miss Ingate suggested.

Audrey was thrilled.

"I do hope it is!" she murmured. "How heavenly! Miss Foley said she was
being watched, didn't she?"

"What had we better do?" Miss Ingate faltered.

"Do, Winnie?" Audrey whispered, tugging at her arm. "We must run in at the
front door and tell Supper-at-nine-o'clock."

They kept cautiously on the far side of the street until the end of it,
when they crossed over, nipped into the dark porch of the house and rang
the bell.

Susan Foley opened for them. There was no light in the hall.

"Oh, is there?" said Susan Foley, very calmly, when she heard the news. "I
think I know who it is. I've seen him hanging round my scullery door
before. How did he climb over those railings?"

"He didn't. He opened the gate."

"Well, I locked the gate myself this afternoon. So he's got a key. I shall
manage him all right. We'll get the fire-extinguishers. There's about a
dozen of 'em, I should think, in this house. They're rather heavy, but we
can do it."

Turning on the light in the hall, she immediately lifted from its hook a
red-coloured metal cone about twenty inches long and eight inches in
diameter at the base. "In case of fire drive in knob by hard blow against
floor, and let liquid play on flames," she read the instructions on the
side. "I know them things," she said. "It spurts out like a fountain, and
it's a rather nasty chemistry sort of a fluid. I shall take one downstairs
to the scullery, and the others we'll have upstairs in the room over Miss
Nickall's. We can put 'em in the housemaid's lift.... I shall open the
scullery door and leave it a bit open like, and when he comes in I'll be
ready for him behind the door with this. If he thinks he can come spying
after our Janey like this----"

"But----" Miss Ingate began.

"You aren't feeling very well, are ye, miss?" Susan Foley demanded, as