mbankment, and lean over the river wall, where he
seemed to be talking to some one. He then walked along the Embankment to
Westminster and that was the last I saw of him. I waited a minute or two
for him to come back, but he didn't come back, and so I thought it was
about time I began to make inquiries into the affair. I went downstairs
instantly, and out of the hotel, through the quadrangle, into Salisbury
Lane, and I looked over those railings. There was a ladder on the other
side, by which it was perfectly easy--once you had got over the
railings--to climb down into the yard. I was horribly afraid lest
someone might walk up Salisbury Lane and catch me in the act of
negotiating those railings, but no one did, and I surmounted them, with
no worse damage than a torn skirt. I crossed the yard on tiptoe, and I
found that in the wall, close to the ground and almost exactly under my
window, there was an iron grating, about one foot by fourteen inches. I
suspected, as there was no other ironwork near, that the mysterious
visitor must have been sawing at this grating for private purposes of
his own. I gave it a good shake, and I was not at all surprised that a
good part of it came off in my hand, leaving just enough room for a
person to creep through. I decided that I would creep through, and now
wish I hadn't. I don't know, Mr Babylon, whether you have ever tried to
creep through a small hole with a skirt on. Have you?'

'I have not had that pleasure,' said little Felix, bowing again, and
absently taking up a bottle which lay to his hand.

'Well, you are fortunate,' the imperturbable Nella resumed. 'For quite
three minutes I thought I should perish in that grating, Dad, with my
shoulder inside and the rest of me outside. However, at last, by the
most amazing and agonizing efforts, I pulled myself through and fell
into this extraordinary cellar more dead than alive. Then I wondered
what I should do next. Should I wait for the mysterious visitor to
return, and stab him with my pocket scissors if he tried to enter, or
should I raise an alarm? First of all I replaced the broken grating,
then I struck a match, and I saw that I had got landed in a wilderness
of bottles. The match went out, and I hadn't another one. So I sat
down in the corner to think. I had just decided to wait and see if the
visitor returned, when I heard footsteps, and then voices; and then you
came in. I must say I was rather taken aback, especially as I recog