plans on which builder and architect had rung the changes, darkness should have been no hindrance to the unwarrantable exploration I was about to conduct. I knew the way through these kitchens, and found it here without a false or noisy step. But in the hall I had to contend with the furniture which makes one interior as different from another as the houses themselves may be alike. The Abercromby Royles had as much furniture as the Delavoyes, only of a different type. It was not massive and unsuitable, but only too dainty and multifarious, no doubt in accordance with the poor wife's taste. I retained an impression of artful simplicity--an enamelled drain-pipe for the umbrellas--painted tambourines and counterfeit milk-stools--which rather charmed me in those days. But I had certainly forgotten a tall flower-stand outside the kitchen door, and over it went crashing as I set foot in the tessellated hall. I doubt if either of us drew breath for some seconds after the last bit of broken plant-pot lay still upon the tiles. Then I rubbed a match on my trousers, but it did not strike. Uvo had me by the hand before I could do it again.

"Do you want to blow up the house?" he croaked. "Can't you smell it for yourself?"

Then I realised that the breath which I had just drawn was acrid with escaped gas.

"It's that asbestos stove again!" I exclaimed, recalling my first visit to the house.

"Which asbestos stove?"

"It's in the dining-room. It was leaking as far back as June."

"Well, we'd better go in there first and open the window. Stop a bit!"

The dining-room was just opposite the kitchen, and I was on the threshold when he pulled me back to tie my handkerchief across my nose and mouth. I did the same for Delavoye, and thus we crept into the room where I had been induced to drink with Royle on the night he went away.

The full moon made smouldering panels of the French window leading into the garden, but little or no light filtered through the long red blind. Delavoye went round to it on tip-toe, and I still say it was a natural instinct that kept our voices down and our movements stealthy; that any other empty house, where we had no business at dead of night, would have had the same 

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