me a
job in life at last!"

I did not smile at my dear old lad. I gave him the assurance his
generosity required, and I meant to carry it out, subject to a plan of
my own for watching Nettleton's house all night. But all my proposals
suffered a proverbial fate within ten minutes, when I was about to pass
the still dark house, and was suddenly confronted by Nettleton himself,
leaning over the gate as though in wait for me.

And here I feel an almost apologetic sense of the inadequacy of
Nettleton's personality to the part that he was playing that night; for
there was nothing terrifying about him, nothing sinister or grotesque.
The outward man was flabbily restless and ineffective, distinguished
from the herd by no stronger features than a goatee beard and the light,
quick, instantaneously responsive eye of an uncannily intelligent child.
And no more than a child did I fear him; man to man, I could have
twisted his arm out of its socket, or felled him like an ox with one
blow from mine. So I thought to myself, the very moment I stopped to
speak to him; and perhaps, by so thinking, recognised some subtler
quality, and confessed a subtle fear.

"I was looking for my old servant," said Nettleton, after a civil
greeting. "She's not come in yet."

"Oh! hasn't she?" I answered, and I liked the ring of my own voice even
less than his.

"Anyhow I can't make her hear, and the old fool's left her door locked,"
said Nettleton.

"That's a bad plan," said I, not to score a silly point, but simply
because I had to say something with conviction. It was a mistake.
Nettleton peered at me by the light from the nearest lamp-post.

"Have you seen anything of her?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes!" I answered, in obedience to the same necessity of temperament.

"Well?" he cried.

"Well, she seemed nervous about something, and I believe she has gone to
her own people for the night."

We stood without speaking for nearly a minute. A soft step came marching
round the asphalt curve, throwing a bright beam now upon its indigo
surface, and now over the fussy fronts of the red houses, as a child
plays with a bit of looking-glass in the sun. "Good-night, officer,"
said Nettleton as the step and the light passed on. And I caught myself
thinking what an improvement the asphalt was in Witching Hill Road, and
how we did want it in Mulcaster Park.

"We can't talk out here, and I wish to explain about this wretched
rent," said Nettleton. "Come