es were
assisted in their offices by a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, her
face was still youthful in contour, and Mr. Narkom, looking at
her, concluded that at twenty-four or twenty-five she must have
been a remarkably pretty and remarkably fascinating woman. What
Cleek's thoughts were upon that subject it is impossible to record;
for he merely gave her one look on coming into the room, and then
took no further notice of her whatsoever.

"Indeed, Mr. Headland, I am glad--I am very, very glad--that fortune
has sent you into this neighbourhood at this terrible time," said
Miss Renfrew when Cleek was introduced. "I do not wish to say
anything disparaging of Mr. Nippers, but you can see for yourself
how unfitted such men as he and his assistant are to handle an
affair of this importance. Indeed, I cannot rid my mind of the
thought that if more competent police were on duty here the murder
would not have happened. In short, that the assassin, whoever he
maybe, counted upon the blundering methods of these men as his
passport to safety."

"My own thought precisely," said Cleek. "Mr. Nippers has given me
a brief outline of the affair--would you mind giving me the full
details, Miss Renfrew? At what hour did Mr. Nosworth go into his
laboratory? Or don't you know, exactly?"

"Yes, I know to the fraction of a moment, Mr. Headland. I was looking
at my watch at the time. It was exactly eight minutes past seven. We
had been going over the monthly accounts together, when he suddenly
got up, and without a word walked through that door over there. It
leads to a covered passage connecting the house proper with the
laboratory. That, as you may have heard, is a circular building with
a castellated top. It was built wholly and solely for the carrying on
of his experiments. There is but one floor and one window--a very
small one about six feet from the ground, and on the side of the
Round House which looks away from this building. Nothing but the door
to that is on this side, light being supplied to the interior by a
roof made entirely of heavy corrugated glass."

"I see. Then the place is like a huge tube."

"Exactly--and lined entirely with chilled steel. Such few wooden
appliances as are necessary for the equipment of the place are
thickly coated with asbestos. I made no comment when my uncle rose
and walked in there without a word. I never did. For the past six
or seven months he had been absorbed in working out the details of a