needn't wait, Bella," I said.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but--I wanted to ask you--is Miss Fleming
well?"

"She was not very well this morning, but I don't think it is serious,
Bella," I replied. She turned to go, but I fancied she hesitated.

"Oh, Bella," I called, as she was going out, "I want to ask you
something. The night at the Fleming home, when you and I watched the
house, didn't you hear some person running along the hall outside your
door? About two o'clock, I think?"

She looked at me stolidly.

"No, sir, I slept all night."

"That's strange. And you didn't hear me when I fell down the dumb-waiter
shaft?"

"Holy saints!" she ejaculated. "Was _that_ where you fell!"

She stopped herself abruptly.

"You heard that?" I asked gently, "and yet you slept all night? Bella,
there's a hitch somewhere. You didn't sleep that night, at all; you told
Miss Fleming I had been up all night. How did you know that? If I didn't
know that you couldn't possibly get around as fast as the--person in the
house that night, I would say you had been in Mr. Fleming's desk,
looking for--let us say, postage stamps. May I have another cup of
coffee?"

She turned a sickly yellow white, and gathered up my cup and saucer with
trembling hands. When the coffee finally came back it was brought
grumblingly by old Heppie. "She says she's turned her ankle," she
sniffed. "Turned it on a lathe, like a table leg, I should say, from the
shape of it." Before I left the dining-room I put another line in my
note-book:

"What does Bella know?"

I got back to the city somewhat late for my appointment with Burton. I
found Wardrop waiting for me at the office, and if I had been astonished
at the change in him two nights before, I was shocked now. He seemed to
have shrunk in his clothes; his eyeballs were bloodshot from drinking,
and his fair hair had dropped, neglected, over his forehead. He was
sitting in his familiar attitude, his elbows on his knees, his chin on
his palms.

He looked at me with dull eyes, when I went in. I did not see Burton at
first. He was sitting on my desk, holding a flat can in his hand, and
digging out with a wooden toothpick one sardine after another and
bolting them whole.

"Your good health," he said, poising one in the air, where it threatened
oily tears over the carpet. "As an appetite-quencher and
thirst-producer, give me the festive sardine. How lovely it would be if
we could eat 'em without smelling 'em!"