He eyed me curiously. I dare say I looked, in my hatless and drenched condition, as if I might come under the latter category.

“It’s all right,” I answered, forcing a laugh. “I wasn’t meditating a plunge in the river. My hat blew off, and when I looked after it I saw something that interested me, and stayed to watch.”

It was a lame explanation and not precisely true. He glanced over the parapet in his turn. The rain was abating once more, and the light was growing as the clouds sped onwards. The moon was at full, and would only set at dawn.

“I don’t see anything,” he remarked. “What was it, sir? Anything suspicious?”

His tone inferred that it must have been something very much out of the common to have kept me there in the rain. Having told him so much I was bound to tell him more.

“A rowboat, with two or three people in it; going down-stream. That’s unusual at this time of night—or morning—isn’t it?”

He grinned widely.

“Was that all? It wasn’t worth the wetting you’ve got, sir!”

“I don’t see where the joke comes in,” I said.

“Well, sir, you newspaper gents are always on the lookout for mysteries,” he asserted, half apologetically. “There’s nothing out of the way in a boat going up or down-stream at any hour of the day or night; or if there was the river police would be on its track in a jiffy. They patrol the river same as we walk our beat. It might have been one of their boats you saw, or some bargees as had been making a night of it ashore. If I [Pg 37]was you, I’d turn in as soon as possible. ’Tain’t good for any one to stand about in wet clothes.”

[Pg 37]

We walked the length of the bridge together, and he continued to hold forth loquaciously. We parted, on the best of terms, at the end of his beat; and following his advice, I walked rapidly homewards. I was chilled to the bone, and unutterably miserable, but if I stayed out all night that would not alter the situation.

The street door swung back under my touch, as I was in the act of inserting my latch-key in the lock. Some one had left it open, in defiance of the regulations, well known to every tenant of the block. I slammed it with somewhat unnecessary vigor, and the sound went booming and echoing up the well of the stone staircase, making a 

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