thout
orders, the better, Sarah always thought. And yet, when she trotted in
front of me through her kitchen and scullery, and so round to the French
windows of the sealed chamber, we found them closely shuttered, as they
must have been left early in the afternoon, unless Nettleton had
returned from his theatre and locked himself in.

It was with rather too vivid a recollection of the finding of Abercromby
Royle, in a corresponding room in Mulcaster Park, that I went on to my
office for an assortment of keys.

"Now, Sarah, you stand sentinel at the gate," I said on my return. "If
Mr. Nettleton should come back while I'm busy, keep him in conversation
while I slip out through your kitchen. I don't much like my job, Sarah,
but neither do I think for a moment that there's anything wrong."

Yet there was a really bright layer of light under the door in which I
now tried key after key, while the old body relieved me of her presence
in order to keep a rather unwilling eye up the road.

At last a key fitted, turned, and the door was open for me to enter if I
dared; and never shall I forget the scene that presented itself when I
did.

The room was unoccupied. That was one thing. Neither the quick nor the
dead lay in wait for me this time. A mere glance explored every corner;
the scanty furniture was that of a joiner's shop and a laboratory in
one; all the library to be seen was a couple of standing bookcases, not
nearly full. But my eyes were rooted in horror to the floor. It also was
bare, in the sense that there was no carpet, though a rug or two had
been roughly folded and piled on the carpenter's bench. In their place,
from skirting-board to skirting-board, the floor was ankle-deep in
shavings. And among the shavings, like so many lighthouses in a yellow
sea, burnt four or five fat ecclesiastical candles. They were not in
candlesticks; at first I thought that they were mounted merely in their
own grease. But Nettleton had run no such risk of one toppling before
its time. Their innocent little flames were within an inch or so of the
shavings--one was nearer still--but before I could probe the simple
secret of the vile device, there was a rustle at my elbow, and there
stood Sarah with her nodding plume.

"Well, I never did!" she exclaimed in a scandalised whisper. "Trying to
set fire to the 'ouse--oh, fie!"

The grotesque inadequacy of these comments, taken in conjunction with
her comparative composure, made me suspec