nothing suspicious: yet my eyes were still following him when Mr.
Trapp halted and knocked at the Jew's door. At the sound, I saw the
man start and hesitate for an instant in his stride: and in that
instant, though he held on his pace and was lost to sight around the
street-corner, I recognised him and understood the limp. He was the
man of the bull-chase--Sergeant Letcher (as the sentry had named him)
of the North Wilts.

Nobody answered Mr. Trapp's knock, though he repeated it four or five
times. He stepped back into the roadway and scanned the unshuttered
upper windows. They were uncurtained, too, every one, and grimed
with dust: and through this dust we could see rows of cast-off suits
dangling within like limp suicides.

"Very odd," commented Mr. Trapp. "You're sure he said five o'clock?"

"Sure," said I.

"Besides--five o'clock or six--why can't the old skin-flint answer?"

He knocked again vigorously. A blind-cord creaked, a window went up
over a ship-chandler's shop next door, and a man thrust out his head.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

"Sorry to disturb ye, Clemow; but old Rodriguez, here, bespoke us to
sweep his chimneys at five, and we can't get admittance."

"Why, I heard him unbolt for ye an hour ago!" said the ship-chandler.
"He woke me up with his noise, letting down the chain."

The door had a latch-handle and Mr. Trapp grasped it. "Drat me, but
you're right!" he exclaimed, as he pressed his thumb and the door at
once yielded. "Huh!" He stared into the empty passage, out of which
a room opened on either hand, each hung with cast-off suits which
seemed to sway slightly in the scanty light filtered through the
shutter-holes. "I don't stomach moving among these. Even in broad
daylight I'm never too sure there ain't a man hidden in one of 'em.
He might be dead, too--by the smell."

He stepped to the foot of the uncarpeted stairs. "Mister Rodriguez!"
he called. His voice echoed up past the cobwebbed landing and seemed
to go wandering aloft among unclean mysteries to the very roof.
Nobody answered.

"Mister Rodriguez!" he called again, and waited. "Let's try the
kitchen," he suggested. "We started with that, last time: and, if my
memory holds good, 'tis the only chimney he uses. He beds in a small
room right over us, next the roof, and keeps a fire going there
through the winter: but the flue of it leads into the same shaft--a
pretty wide shaft as I rec'llect."

We groped our wa