it. What is he hiding for? What has he done? Except for
the girl, I am all alone in the house with him, and it's more than my
nerves can stand."

Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the woman's
shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished.
The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed
into their usual commonplace. She sat down in the chair which he had
indicated.

"If I take it up I must understand every detail," said he. "Take time
to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential. You say
that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight's board and
lodging?"

"He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is a
small sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the
house."

"Well?"

"He said, 'I'll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own
terms.' I'm a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little, and the
money meant much to me. He took out a ten-pound note, and he held it
out to me then and there. 'You can have the same every fortnight for a
long time to come if you keep the terms,' he said. 'If not, I'll have
no more to do with you.'

"What were the terms?"

"Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. That was
all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was to be left
entirely to himself and never, upon any excuse, to be disturbed."

"Nothing wonderful in that, surely?"

"Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been there
for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set
eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and down,
up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on that first night
he had never once gone out of the house."

"Oh, he went out the first night, did he?"

"Yes, sir, and returned very late--after we were all in bed. He told
me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and asked me not to
bar the door. I heard him come up the stair after midnight."

"But his meals?"

"It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang,
leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again
when he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair. If he
wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it."

"Prints it?"

"Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here's
the one I brought to