ected--a kind of sitting-room, or perhaps
boudoir, for there was an old-fashioned high-backed piano in it. Yet
there was no sign that anybody had entered there for weeks--perhaps
for months. In the sunlight, I saw that there were cobwebs everywhere.
Surely it was a very strange house. It struck me that its owner had
perhaps died years ago, and since then it had remained untenanted.
Everywhere the style of furniture was that of sixty years ago, and
thick dust was covering all.

On entering the previous night I had not noticed this, but now, in the
broad light of day, the place looked very different. I saw, to my
surprise, that the windows had not been cleaned for years, and that
cobwebs hung everywhere.

Revolver in hand, I searched the place to the basement, but there was
no evidence of occupation. The doors of the kitchens had not,
apparently, been opened for years!

Upstairs, the bedrooms were old-fashioned, with heavy hangings, grey
with dust, and half hidden by festoons of cobwebs. In not a single
room was a bed that had been slept in. Indeed, I question if any one
had ascended to the second floor for several years!

As I stood in one of the rooms, gazing round in wonder, and half
suffocated by the dust my footsteps had disturbed, it suddenly
occurred to me that the pair of assassins, believing that I had died,
would, no doubt, return and dispose of my body. To me it seemed
certain that this was not the first occasion that they had played the
dastardly and brutal game. Yes, I felt positive they would return.

I searched the place to find a telephone, but there was none. The
bogus message sent to me had been sent from elsewhere.

The only trace of Sylvia I could find was that piece of velvet
ribbon, the embroidery which had so hastily been flung down, and the
bowl of fresh roses.

Why had she been there? The book and the embroidery showed that she
had waited. For what? That bowl of roses had been placed there to make
the room look fresh, for some attempt had been made to clean the
apartment, just as it had been made in the room wherein I had suffered
such torture.

Why had Sylvia uttered those screams of horror? I recollected those
words of hers. I recognized her voice. I would, indeed, have
recognized it among the voices of a thousand women.

I returned to the drawing-room, and gazed around it in wonder. If, as
it seemed, Reckitt and Forbes had taken unlawful possession of an
untenanted house, then it wa