n the
floor above to play cards, and he said he was going to be gone nearly
all night, and my niece--I'm Mrs. Braydon's unmarried aunt from
Poughkeepsie and I'm down here visiting them--my niece was called to
Long Island yesterday by illness--it's her sister who's ill with
something like the bronchitis. And he was gone and so she was gone, and
so here I was all alone and he told me not to stay up for him, but I
couldn't sleep well--I never can sleep in a strange house--and just a
few minutes ago I heard the bell ring and I supposed he had forgotten
to take his latchkey with him, and so I got up to let him in. And I
called down the stairs and asked him if it was him and he answered back.
But it didn't sound like his voice. But I didn't think anything of that.
But, of course, it was out of the ordinary for him to have a voice like
that. But all the same I went back to bed. But he didn't come in and I
was just getting up again to see what detained him--his voice really
sounded so strange I thought then he might have been taken sick or
something. But just as I got to the door a plank creaked and I opened
the door and there it was right where I could have touched him. And then
it ran--and oh, what if----"

"I'm astin' you once more what it was like?"

"How should I know except that----"

"Was it a big, fat, wild, bare-headed, scary, awful-lookin' scoundrel
dressed in some kind of funny pink clothes?"

"Yes, that's it! That's him--he was all sort of pink. Oh, did you see
him too? Oh, is it a burglar?"

"Burglar nothin'! It's a ravin', rampagin' lunatic--that's what it is!"

"Oh, my heavens, a lunatic!"

"Sure it is. He tried to git me to let him in and----"

"Oh, whatever shall we do!"

XIII

"Hey, what's all the excitement about?"

A new and deeper voice here broke into the babel, and Mr. Leary
recognising it at a distance, where he stood listening--but not failing,
even while he listened, to strive unavailingly with his problem of
buttons--knew he was saved. Knowing this he nevertheless retreated still
deeper into the inner room. The thought of spectators in numbers
remained very abhorrent to him. So he did not hear all that happened
next, except in broken snatches.

He gathered though, from what he did hear, that Bob Slack and Mr. Edward
Braydon were coming up the stairs, and that a third male whom they
called Officer was coming with them, and that the janitress was coming
likewise, and that divers lower-