in rather a fix, my
young friend."

She looked at the scissors and shuddered.

"I did kill something," she said in a low voice, "an awful dog... I
don't know how I did it, but the beastly thing jumped at me and I just
stabbed him and killed him, and I am glad," she nodded many times and
repeated, "I am glad."

"So I gather--I found the dog and now perhaps you'll explain why I
didn't find you?"

Again she hesitated and he felt that she was hiding something from him.

"I don't know why you didn't find me," she said; "I was there."

"How did you get out?"

"How did you get out?" she challenged him boldly.

"I got out through the door," he confessed; "it seems a ridiculously
commonplace way of leaving but that's the only way I could see."

"And that's how I got out," she answered, with a little smile.

"But it was locked."

She laughed.

"I see now," she said; "I was in the cellar. I heard your key in the
lock and bolted down the trap, leaving those awful scissors behind. I
thought it was Kara with some of his friends and then the voices died
away and I ventured to come up and found you had left the door open.
So--so I--"

These queer little pauses puzzled T. X. There was something she was not
telling him. Something she had yet to reveal.

"So I got away you see," she went on. "I came out into the kitchen;
there was nobody there, and I passed through the area door and up the
steps and just round the corner I found a taxicab, and that is all."

She spread out her hands in a dramatic little gesture.

"And that is all, is it?" said T. X.

"That is all," she repeated; "now what are you going to do?"

T. X. looked up at the ceiling and stroked his chin.

"I suppose that I ought to arrest you. I feel that something is due from
me. May I ask if you were sleeping in the bed downstairs?"

"In the lower cellar?" she demanded,--a little pause and then, "Yes, I
was sleeping in the cellar downstairs."

There was that interval of hesitation almost between each word.

"What are you going to do?" she asked again.

She was feeling more sure of herself and had suppressed the panic which
his sudden appearance had produced in her. He rumpled his hair, a gross
imitation, did she but know it, of one of his chief's mannerisms and she
observed that his hair was very thick and inclined to curl. She saw also
that he was passably good looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose
and a most firm chin.

"I think," she sug