of the house, the other into the boys' section. Any interruption that
there might be would come from the further door.

To make himself more secure he locked that door; then, turning up the
incandescent light, he proceeded to look about him.

Mr. Wain's dining-room repaid inspection. There were the remains of
supper on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and took some
biscuits from the box, feeling that he was doing himself well. This
was Life. There was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished it.
As it swished into the glass, it made a noise that seemed to him like
three hundred Niagaras; but nobody else in the house appeared to have
noticed it.

He took some more biscuits, and an apple.

After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.

And this was where the trouble began.

On a table in one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones
happened to be Mike's particular craze.

All thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his
head, or he may have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed
he was. The fact remains that _he_ inserted the first record that
came to hand, wound the machine up, and set it going.

The next moment, very loud and nasal, a voice from the machine
announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing "The Quaint Old Bird."
And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did so.

_"Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat."_

Mike stood and drained it in.

_"... Good gracious_ (sang Mr. Field), _what was that?"_

It was a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned
almost immediately into a spirited banging. A voice accompanied the
banging. "Who is there?" inquired the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr.
Wain's. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no
need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held
in check by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable
and instantaneous way of escape.

Mike crept across the room on tip-toe and opened the window. It had
occurred to him, just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room,
found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys' part of the
house, he might possibly obtain a clue to his identity. If, on the
other hand, he opened the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike
had not read his "Raffles" for nothing.

The handle-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal
attack was kept up, there was no