could get their hand deep enough into their neighbour’s pocket.”

[Pg 35]

“Talking through his hat,” Dauncey muttered.

“That is what we shall find out. Only remember this, Richard. I am convinced that I possess in some degree that sixth sense the French criminologist talked about,—the sense for Adventure. I’ve had to keep my nose to the grindstone, worse luck, but there have been times when I’ve lifted my head and sniffed it in the air. In queer places, too! In the dark, shadowy streets of old towns which I have visited as a commercial traveller, selling goods by day and wandering out alone by night into the backwaters. I’ve felt the thrill there, Dick, trying to look through the curtained windows of some of those lonely houses. I’ve been brushed by a stranger in Fleet Street and felt it; looked into a woman’s mysterious eyes as she turned around, with a latchkey in her hand, before a house in Bloomsbury. We shan’t need to wander far away, Richard.”

“Seems to me,” the latter observed, “that I am to play Man Friday to—”

He suddenly stood rigid. He gripped his friend’s arm, his lips a little parted. He was listening in a paroxysm of subdued joy. From out of the sitting-room window came faint sounds of melody.

[Pg 36]

[Pg 36]

“It’s Nora,” he murmured ecstatically. “It’s the first time for years! She’s singing!”

He moved involuntarily towards the house. Jacob filled his pipe and strolled across the way, homewards.

[Pg 37]

[Pg 37]

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of the House of Bultiwell and Sons, sat alone in his private office, one morning a week or so later, and communed with ghosts. It was a large apartment, furnished in mid-Victorian fashion, and, with the exception of the telephone and electric light, destitute of any of the modern aids to commercial enterprise. Oil paintings of Mr. Bultiwell’s father and grandfather hung upon the walls. A row of stiff, horsehair chairs with massive frames stood around the room, one side of which was glass-fronted, 

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