by a bedroom near the roof and the
costume of a Punchinello was too bold altogether, and relied too much on
his unproved fund of goodnature. Moreover, Mr. Herbert (whoever he might
be) would not have treated the situation so cavalierly. At the least (and
however 'irregilar'), Mr. Herbert would have been waiting to deprecate
vengeance. A wild suspicion occurred to me that 'Mr. Herbert' might be
another name for Trewlove, and that Trewlove under that name was gaining a
short start from justice. But no: William had alluded to Mr. Herbert as
to a youth sowing his wild oats. Impossible to contemplate Trewlove under
this guise! Where then did Trewlove come in? Was he, perchance,
'Mr. Horrex,' the butler?

I gave it up and began thoughtfully, and not without difficulty, to case
myself in the disguise of Punchinello. I resolved to see this thing
through. The costume had evidently not been made to my measure, and in
the process of induing it I paused once or twice to speculate on the
eccentricities of the figure to which it had been shaped or the abstract
anatomical knowledge of the tailor who had shaped it. I declare that the
hump seemed the one normal thing about it. But by this time my
detective-hunger--not to call it a thirst for vengeance--was asserting
itself above petty vanity. I squeezed myself into the costume; and then,
clapping on the false nose, stood arrayed--as queer a figure, surely, as
ever was assumed by retributive Justice.

So, with a heart hardened by indignation and prepared for the severest
measures, I descended to the drawing-room landing. Two doors opened upon
it--that of the drawing-room itself, which faced over a terrace roofing
the kitchens and across it to a garden in the rear of the house, and that
of a room overlooking the street and scarcely less spacious. This had
been the deceased General's bedroom, and in indolence rather than impiety
I had left it unused with all its hideous furniture--including the
camp-bed which his martial habits affected. And this was the apartment I
entered, curious to learn how it had been converted into a reception-room
for the throng which now filled it.

I recognised only the wall-paper. The furniture had been removed, the
carpet taken up, the boards waxed to a high degree of slipperiness; and
across the far end stretched a buffet-table presided over by a venerable
person in black, with white hair, a high clear complexion, and a
deportment which hit a