starry points. How
impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the
hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night had loosed a
soul upon the infinite.

"Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is
the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."

"Are the study windows visible from there?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Who occupies the adjoining house?"

"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."

"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."

Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to
wonder at anything. Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed
to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My
friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on
our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story
of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the
study; the wail in the lane--all were fitter incidents of delirium than
of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a
nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door
residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:

"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It
is getting late. Keep your eyes open and be on your guard. I thought
I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he
probably knows by now that I am here, too."

With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with
leisure to think, to try to understand.

The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had
been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had
died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the
residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I
gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so
suddenly had found myself involved.

By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death? Did Nayland Smith know?
I rather suspected that he did. What was the hidden significance of
the perfumed envelope? Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so
evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had
murdered Sir