id you bring the medicine with you?'

'It was a packet in an envelope, ma'am. But Cook is sure she heard
no knock--not while I was out. So Dr Ferguson must have come in quite
unbeknown.'

'Well, really,' said Sheila, 'it seems very difficult to get at the
truth sometimes. And when illness is in the house I cannot understand
why there should be no one available to answer the door. You must
have left it ajar, unsecured, when you went out. And pray, what if Dr
Ferguson had been some common tramp? That would have been a nice thing.'

'I am quite certain,' said Ada a little flatly, 'that I did shut the
door. And cook says she never so much as stirred from the kitchen till
I came down the area steps with the packet. And that's all I know about
it, ma'am; except that he was here when I came back. I did not know even
there was a Dr Ferguson; and my mother has lived here nineteen years.'

'We must be thankful your mother enjoys such good health,' replied
Mrs Lawford suavely. 'Please tell cook to be very careful with the
cornflour--to be sure it's well mixed and thoroughly done.'

Mrs Lawford's eyes followed with a certain discomfort those narrow print
shoulders descending the stairs. And this abominable ruse was--Arthur's!
She ran up lightly and listened with her ear to the panel of his door.
And just as she was about to turn away again, there came a little light
knock at the front door.

Mrs Lawford paused at the loop of the staircase; and not altogether
with gratitude or relief she heard the voice of Mr Bethany, inquiring in
cautious but quite audible tones after her husband.

She dressed quickly and went down. The little white old man looked very
solitary in the long, fireless, drawing-room.

'I could not sleep,' he said; 'I don't think I grasped in the least, I
don't indeed, until I was nearly home, the complexity of our problem.
I came, in fact, to a lamppost. It was casting a peculiar shadow.
And then--you know how such thoughts seize us, my dear--like a sudden
inspiration, I realised how tenuous, how appallingly tenuous a hold we
every one of us have on our mere personality. But that,' he continued
rapidly, 'that's only for ourselves--and after the event. Ours, just
now, is to act. And first--?'

'You really do, then--you really are convinced--' began Mrs Lawford.

But Mr Bethany was too quick. 'We must be most circumspect. My dear
friend, we must be most circumspect, for all our sakes. And this, you'll
say,' h