ibly as he snapped the
shutter over the bull's-eye and handed it back to Petrie.

"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent?"

"No--not a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down
there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why,
the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's
a bend--an abrupt 'elbow'--that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And
that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly
back to bed by the way he came, and if--"

There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp,
wheezing sound. For, of a sudden, a swift pattering footfall and a
glimmer of moving light had sprung into being and drawn his eyes upward;
and there, overhead, was Miss Lome coming down the stairs from the upper
floor in a state of nervous excitement, and with a bedroom candle in her
shaking hand, a loose gown flung on over her nightdress, and her hair
streaming over her shoulders in glorious disarray.

He stood and looked at her, with ever-quickening breath, with
ever-widening eyes, as though the beauty of her had wakened some dormant
sense whose existence he had never suspected; as though, until now, he
had never known how fair it was possible for a woman to be, how fair,
how lovable, how much to be desired; and whilst he was so looking she
reached the foot of the staircase and came pantingly toward him.

"Oh, Mr. Narkom, what was it--that noise I heard?" she said in a tone of
deepest agitation. "It sounded like a struggle--like the noise of
something breaking--and I dressed as hastily as I could and came down.
Did he come? Has he been here? Have you caught him? Oh! why don't you
answer me, instead of staring at me like this? Can't you see how
nervous, how frightened, I am? Dear Heaven! will no one tell me what has
happened?"

"Nothing has happened, miss," answered Petrie, catching her eye as she
flashed round on him. "You'd better go back to bed. Nobody's been here
but Sir Horace. The noise you heard was me a-grabbing of him, and he and
Mr. Narkom a-tumbling over something as they went down to look at the
furnace."

"Furnace? What furnace? What are you talking about?" she cried
agitatedly. "What do you mean by saying that Sir Horace came down?"

"Only what the superintendent himself will tell you, miss, if you ask
him. Sir Horace came downstairs in his pyjamas a few minutes ago to say
as he'd recollected about the flue