take any one’s word for anything that he might find out for himself. In his investigations on Tuesday morning he had already seen the half-ruined shed, now he knew that it contained a broken bench.
Thus far, therefore, Knoll’s story was proved to be true—but there was something that didn’t quite hitch in another way. The tramp had said that he had seen first a woman and then a man come from the main house and go in the direction of the smaller house which he took to be the gardener’s dwelling. This Muller discovered now was quite impossible. A tall hedge, fully seven or eight feet high and very thick, stretched from the courtyard far down into the garden past the gardener’s little house. There was a broad path on the right and the left of this green wall. From his position in the shed, Knoll could have seen people passing only when they were on the right side of the hedge. But to reach the gardener’s house from the main dwelling, the shortest way would be on the left side of the hedge. This much Muller saw, then he heard the butler’s steps along the hall and he went back to the corner where the dog lay.
Franz was not alone. There was some one else with him, the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernauer. Just as they opened the door, Muller heard her say: “If the gentleman is a veterinary, then we’d better ask him about the parrot—”
The sentence was never finished. Muller never found out what was the matter with the parrot, for as he looked up with a polite smile of interest, he looked into a pale face, into a pair of eyes that opened wide in terror, and heard trembling lips frame the words: “There he is again!”
A moment later Mrs. Bernauer would have been glad to have recalled her exclamation, but it was too late.
Muller bowed before her and asked: “‘There he is again,’ you said; have you ever seen me before?”
The woman looked at him as if hypnotised and answered almost in a whisper: “I saw you Tuesday morning for the first time, Tuesday morning when the family were going away. Then I saw you pass through our street twice again that same day. This morning you went past the garden gate and now I find you here. What-what is it you want of us?”
“I will tell you what I want, Mrs. Bernauer,
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