"We'll have to cut out of
this." He pointed downward on the side away from the street.
"I say, what happened? Who did it, eh?"

"I slipped in the chimney," I answered again. "He wanted his
chimneys swept this morning. We knocked--Mr. Trapp and I--and no one
answered: then we tried the door, and it opened. There was no one
about, and no one in the street but Sergeant Letcher."

He began to shake. "Sergeant Letcher? What do you know about
Sergeant Letcher?"

"Nothing, except that he was in the street--the man the bull chased,
you know."

He was shaking yet. "I ought to kill you," said he. "But I didn't
do it. Look here, show me a way down and I'll let you off.
You're used to this work, ain't you?"

"How did you come up?" I asked, innocently enough.

"By the Lord, if you ask questions, I'll strangle you! You were in
the room with--with _it_! I saw you: I'll swear I saw you. Get me
down out of this, and hide--get on board some ship, and clear.
See? If you breathe a word that you've seen me, I'll cut your heart
out. You understand me?"

I hadn't a doubt then that he was guilty. His fear was too craven.
"There's a warehouse at the end here," said I, and led the way to it.
But when we reached it, its roof rose in a sharp slope from the low
parapet guarding the leads where we stood.

"But I don't see," he objected; "and, anyway, I can't manage that."

I pointed to a louver skylight half-way up the roof. "We can prise
that open, or break it. It's easy enough to reach," I assured him.

He was extraordinarily clumsy on the slates, but obeyed my
instructions like a child. I wrenched at the wooden louvers.

"Got a knife?" I asked.

He produced one--an ugly-looking weapon, but clean. By good luck, we
did not need it; for as he passed it to me, the louver at which I was
tugging broke and came away in my hand. We easily loosened another
and, squeezing through, dropped into the loft upon a sliding pile of
grain.

The loft was dark enough; but a glimmer of light shone through the
chinks of a door at the far end. Unbolting it, we looked down, from
the height of thirty feet or so, into a deserted lane. Or rather _I_
looked down: for while I fumbled with the bolts Master Archie had
banged his head into something hard, and dropped, rubbing the hurt
and cursing.

It proved to be the timber cross-piece of a derrick used for hoisting
sacks of grain into the loft, working on an axle, and now swung
inboa