grand piano remained, it being apparently too large and heavy for rapid transit.

He ascended, even to the servants’ rooms on the top floor, but found scarcely a vestige of furniture left.

In one back room, a small half-garret with a slightly eloping roof, he noticed a cupboard which curiosity led him to open, as he had opened other cupboards. As he did so, he saw a bundle upon the floor, as though it had been hastily thrown there.

As he pulled it forth it unrolled, and he then saw that it was a woman’s light grey tweed skirt and coat.

The latter felt damp to his touch, and as he held it up to examine it he saw that the breast and sleeve were both saturated with blood!

It dropped from his nerveless fingers. Some secret crime had been committed in that house, so suddenly and mysteriously divested of its furniture.

But what?

Max Barclay, pale as death, stood gazing around him, staggered, bewildered, horrified, scarce daring to breathe.

Why had Charles Rolfe fled so hurriedly and secretly from the place?

Chapter Five.

What a Constable Saw.

Slowly Max Barclay regained possession of his senses. The discovery had so staggered him that, for a few moments, he had stood there in that room, staring at the woman’s tweed coat, transfixed in horror.

There was some great and terrible mystery there, and with it Charlie Rolfe, the man whom he had so implicitly trusted, his most intimate friend, and brother of the woman who was all the world to him, was closely associated.

He glanced around the bare garret in apprehension. All was so weird and unexpected that a queer, uncanny feeling had crept over him. What could have occurred to have caused this revolution in the Doctor’s house?

Here in that house, only a few hours ago, he had smoked calmly with Petrovitch, the studious Servian patriot, the man whom the Servians worshipped, and who was the right hand of his sovereign the King. When they had chatted of Maud’s flirtation there had been no suggestion of departure. Indeed, the Doctor had invited him to return after dinner, as he so often did. Max was an easy, gay, careless man of the world, yet he was fond of study, and fond of the society of clever 

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