; but it proved to be
a crescent and brought him back practically to the spot he had
started from. Thereupon, he took the other and followed it up,
ignoring various side-turnings which he feared might be pitfalls
like the last: But the second road was as bad as the first. It
was a cul de sac and brought Desmond face to face with a blank
wall.

He turned and looked about him for somebody of whom to ask the
way. But the street was entirely deserted. He seemed to be on the
very summit of the hill; for all the roads were a-tilt. Though
the evening was falling fast, no light appeared in any of the
houses and the street lamps were yet unlit. Save for the distant
bourdon of the traffic which rose to his ears like the beating of
the surf, the breeze rustling the bushes in the gardens was the
only sound.

Desmond started to walk back slowly the way he had come.
Presently, his eyes caught the gleam of a light from above a
front door. When he drew level with it, he saw that a gas-jet was
burning in the fanlight over the entrance to a neat little
two-story house which stood by itself in a diminutive garden. As
by this time he was thoroughly sick of wandering aimlessly about,
he went up to the neat little house and rang the bell.

A maid-servant in a cap and apron who seemed to be drawn to the
scale of the house, such an insignificant little person she was,
opened the door.

"Oh, sir," she exclaimed when she saw him, "was it about the
rooms?"

And she pointed up at the fan-light where, for the first time,
Desmond noticed a printed card with the inscription-:

"Furnished Rooms to Let."

The servant's unexpected question put an idea into Desmond's
head. He could not return to the club, he reflected, since he was
supposed to be killed in action. Why not take a room in this
house in the heart of the enemy's country and spend some days on
the watch for Mrs. Malplaquet or for any clue that might lead him
to her?

So Desmond answered, yes, it was about the rooms he had come.

Promising that she would tell "the missus," the little servant
showed him into a tiny sitting-room, very clean and bright, with
blue cretonne curtains and a blue carpet and an engraving of
"King Cophetua and The Beggar Maid" over the mantelpiece.
Directly you came into the room, everything in it got up and
shouted "Tottenham Court Road."

Then the door opened and, with a great tinkling and rustling, a
stoutish, brisk-looking woman sailed in. The tinkl