the street being higher, a door-step rose
above the flood. On the step was sitting a forlorn yellow puppy. As
we stared, Mr. Ladley stopped the boat, looked back at us, bent over,
placed a piece of liver on a platter, and reached it over to the dog.
Then, rising in the boat, he bowed, with his hat over his heart, in
our direction, sat down calmly, and rowed around the corner out of
sight.

Mr. Holcombe was in a frenzy of rage. He jumped up and down, shaking
his fist out the window after the retreating boat. He ran down the
staircase, only to come back and look out the window again. The police
boat was not in sight, but the Maguire children had worked their raft
around to the street and were under the window. He leaned out and
called to them.

"A quarter each, boys," he said, "if you'll take me on that raft to
the nearest pavement."

"Money first," said the oldest boy, holding his cap.

But Mr. Holcombe did not wait. He swung out over the window-sill,
holding by his hands, and lit fairly in the center of the raft.

"Don't touch anything in that room until I come back," he called to
me, and jerking the pole from one of the boys, propelled the raft with
amazing speed down the street.

The liver on the stove was burning. There was a smell of scorching
through the rooms and a sort of bluish haze of smoke. I hurried back
and took it off. By the time I had cleaned the pan, Mr. Holcombe was
back again, in his own boat. He had found it at the end of the next
street, where the flood ceased, but no sign of Ladley anywhere. He had
not seen the police boat.

"Perhaps that is just as well," he said philosophically. "We can't go
to the police with a wet slipper and a blood-stained rope and accuse a
man of murder. We have to have a body."

"He killed her," I said obstinately. "She told me yesterday he was a
fiend. He killed her and threw the body in the water."

"Very likely. But he didn't throw it here."

But in spite of that, he went over all the lower hall with his boat,
feeling every foot of the floor with an oar, and finally, at the back
end, he looked up at me as I stood on the stairs.

"There's something here," he said.

I went cold all over, and had to clutch the railing. But when Terry
had come, and the two of them brought the thing to the surface, it was
only the dining-room rug, which I had rolled up and forgotten to carry
up-stairs!

At half past one Mr. Holcombe wrote a note, and sent it off with
Terry, a