I’d better look at the wires in the gentleman’s room,” he said, when he had returned plate and button to their place.     

       “Just as you say,” replied Franz, taking up his candle and leading the way out into the hall and down the winding stair. They crossed the lower corridor, mounted another staircase and entered a large, handsomely furnished room, half studio, half library. The wall was covered with pictures and sketches, several easels stood piled up in the corner, and a broad table beside them held paint boxes, colour tubes, brushes, all the paraphernalia of the painter, now carefully ordered and covered for a term of idleness. Great bookcases towered to the ceiling, and a huge flat top desk, a costly piece of furniture, was covered with books and papers. It was the room of a man of brains and breeding, a man of talent and ability, possessing, furthermore, the means to indulge his tastes freely. Even now, with its master absent, the handsome apartment bore the impress of his personality. The detective’s quick imagination called up the attractive, sympathetic figure of the man he had seen at the gate, as his quick eye took in the details of the room. All the charm of Herbert Thorne’s personality, which the keen-sensed Muller had felt so strongly even in that fleeting glimpse of him, came back again here in the room which was his own little kingdom and the expression of his mentality.     

       “Well, what’s the trouble here? Where are the wires?” asked the detective, after the momentary pause which had followed his entrance into the room. Franz led him to a spot on the wall hidden by a marquetry cabinet. “Here’s the bell, it rings for several minutes before it stops.”      

       The light of the candle which the butler held fell upon a portrait hanging above the cabinet. It was a sketch in water-colours, the life-sized head of a man who may have been about thirty years old, perhaps, but who had none of the freshness and vigour of youth. The scanty hair, the sunken temples, and the faded skin, emphasised the look of dissipation given by the lines about the sensual mouth and the shifty eyes.     

       “Well, say, can’t your master find anything better to paint than a face like that?” Muller asked with a laugh.     

       “Goodness me! you mustn’t say such things!” exclaimed Franz in alarm;       “that’s the Madam’s brother. He’s an officer, 

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