middle window being unfastened, and where he's gone no one knows."

"The middle drawing-room window could not have been unfastened," said Patricia, raising her dripping face from the basin. "Bunson locked it before he went to the theatre."

"Well, then, it must have been opened since, my dear, for the latch is undone, and it has been pushed up a little way from the bottom. Martha couldn't have done it, as her foot was so bad she couldn't have left the sofa. I daresay the villain did it."

"He could scarcely have opened the window from the outside," said Patricia.

Mrs. Sellars shook her head mournfully. "I'm not so sure of that, my dear," was her reply. "The balcony runs along the front of all three windows, and as they are old and shaky, like all the house, he could easily have slipped a knife between the upper and lower sashes and pressed back the snick."

"But in that case Mrs. Pentreddle, thinking a burglar was trying to get in, would have shrieked for assistance," argued Miss Carrol.

"Who would hear her?" asked Mrs. Sellars very pertinently. "There was no one in the house, and I daresay no one in the road, as scarcely anyone comes along so far as this; on a foggy night, too. Who would come here on a foggy night? No. The villain found poor Martha all alone and stuck her like a pig. You shouldn't have left her."

"She asked me to."

"She asked you to?" repeated Mrs. Sellars, her round eyes growing rounder with astonishment. "Asked you to what?"

"To go on an errand, and"----Patricia checked herself, as it was unnecessary to repeat her story twice, and she wished to tell it in the presence of the police-officer. "It's too long to tell you now," she said hastily, and looked in the glass to see that her hair was in order. "Come downstairs, and let me see the man in charge of the case."

"Oh!" wailed Mrs. Sellars, submitting to be led out of the room. "Oh, that I should have lived to hear Martha called a case! And Bunson called her 'the remains.' Such an insult!"

"What did Bunson say exactly?" inquired Patricia quickly.

"He said that he and Matilda and Sarah and Eliza came round by the back and entered the house by the kitchen. While Matilda made up the fire and put on the kettle, Bunson went up to 

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