open."

Ella's voice was tremulous. Her tremor had the effect of making Madge sarcastic.

"That's probably because our visitor opened it. You could hardly expect him to stop to close it, could you?"

She went boldly into the room--Ella hard on her heels. She held the candle above her head--to have it almost blown out by the draught. She placed it on the table.

"If we want to have a light upon the subject, we shall have to shut that window."

She did so. Then looked about her.

"Well, he doesn't seem to have left many tokens of his presence. There's a chair knocked over, and he's pushed the cloth half off the table, but I don't see anything else."

"He seems to have taken nothing."

"Probably that was because there was nothing worth his taking. If he came here in search of plunder, he must have gone away a disgusted man."

"If he came here in search of plunder?--what else could he have come for?"

"Ah! that's the question."

"What's this?" Stooping, Ella picked up something off the floor. "Here's something he's left behind, at any rate."

She was holding a scrap of paper.

"What is it--a pièce de conviction of the first importance: the button off the coat by means of which the infallible detective hunts down the callous criminal?"

"I don't know what it is. It's a sort of hieroglyphic--if it isn't--nonsense."

Madge went and looked over her shoulder. Ella was holding half a sheet of dirty white notepaper, on which was written, with very bad ink and a very bad pen, in a very bad hand:--

"TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST."

"Right--Straight across--three--four--up.

"Right--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--left eye--push."

 

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