is an invalid," she continued;
"I am anxious that she should not be quite starved. I will cook the
chicken therefore, and you will be responsible, perhaps, for the
bread-sauce, Mrs Ragg."

The woman, looking alarmedly at her, murmured the word "bread-sauce?"
and sucked in her cheeks.

"You know how to make bread-sauce, Mrs Ragg?"

Mrs Ragg had to confess she did not.

"But how can you possibly have had a reputation as a cook!" my sister
demanded. Her eyes continued to blaze forth the inquiry long after
there was any hope of the woman making a reply.

"I'm afraid you are a helpless creature," Julia told her, with the
stern pitilessness that belongs to youth. "I also do not know how to
make bread-sauce, but I will make it. In the meantime, will you go up
to our rooms, fetch down the empty packing-cases--you will find them
extremely light--and place them in that shed across the yard we saw
empty this morning."

Undoubtedly Mrs Ragg was a helpless creature. She stood uncertainly
before us, her skinny hands playing tremblingly with the buttons of her
dress, and did not attempt to move.

"Do you not hear me? Go at once," Julia commanded.

But I saw that the woman got no nearer to our rooms than the bottom of
the staircase. She stood there, clinging to the rail, and looking
aimlessly upward.

Running upstairs I brought the two light cases down myself.

"There is room for them in the kitchen," Mrs Ragg said. But, carrying
one myself, I told her to bring the other across to the empty shed.
Arrived there, however, we found the door of the shed locked.

"Fetch the key," I ordered.

She stood and looked at me, but did not move.

"Tell me where the key is, and let me fetch it."

The key was lost.

"Why have you taken the trouble to lock an absolutely empty shed?"

She had no reason to give. She had locked it, and the key was lost.

"She has some reason for not wishing us to go into that shed," Julia
said, oracularly, when the circumstance was mentioned to her.

"Absurd!" I said, but I did begin to experience an uncomfortable
suspicion of the woman.

"She has got those men locked up there," Julia continued, with her air
of assurance.

"Nonsense! What for?"

"Murder," said Julia, laconically; and energetically crumbled bread for
the sauce.

"What were two men doing here this morning?" I asked, with assumed
carelessness, of Mrs Ragg when next we encountered.

She mumbled the words "two men?" and stared a