siness.

"A development at last!" he said; "but at present I don't know what
to make of it. Can you come down now?"

"Where are you speaking from?"

"From the Waterloo Road--a delightful neighbourhood. I shall be
glad if you can meet me at the entrance to Wyatt's Buildings in
half an hour."

"What is it? Have you found Dexter?"

"No, unfortunately. But it's murder!"

I knew as I hung up the receiver that my brief period of peace was
ended; that the lists of assassination were reopened. I hurried
out through the court into Fleet Street, thinking of the key of the
now empty case at the Museum which reposed at my bankers, thinking
of the devils who pursued the slipper, thinking of the hundred and
one things, strange and terrible, which went to make up the history
of that gruesome relic.

Wyatt's Buildings, Waterloo Road, are a gloomy and forbidding block
of dwellings which seem to frown sullenly upon the high road, from
which they are divided by a dark and dirty courtyard. Passing an
iron gateway, you enter, by way of an arch, into this sinister place
of uncleanness. Male residents in their shirt sleeves lounge
against the several entrances. Bedraggled women nurse dirty infants
and sit in groups upon the stone steps, rendering them almost
impassable. But to-night a thing had happened in Wyatt's Buildings
which had awakened in the inhabitants, hardened to sordid crime, a
sort of torpid interest.

Faces peered from most of the windows which commanded a view of the
courtyard, looking like pallid blotches against the darkness; but
a number of police confined the loungers within their several
doorways, so that the yard itself was comparatively clear.

I had had some difficulty in forcing a way through the crowd which
thronged the entrance, but finally I found myself standing beside
Inspector Bristol and looking down upon that which had brought us
both to Wyatt's Buildings.

There was no moon that night, and only the light of the lamp in the
archway, with some faint glimmers from the stairways surrounding the
court, reached the dirty paving. Bristol directed the light of a
pocket-lamp upon the hunched-up figure which lay in the dust, and I
saw it to be that of a dwarfish creature, yellow skinned and wearing
only a dark loin cloth. He had a malformed and disproportionate
head, a head that had been too large even for a big man. I knew
after first glance that this was one of the horrible dwarfs employed
b