lthough that seemed as improbable as it now turns out to be, in
the face of the fact that on the night after his wife left him he
turned up at the Cafe Royal and publicly----No matter! Go on with
the case, please. What about the boy?"

"Let's see, now, where was I?" said Trent, knotting up his brow.
"Oh, ah! I recollect--just where he asked me if he could go up and
see Loti at work. Of course, I said that he could; there wasn't any
reason why I shouldn't, as the place is open to inspection always,
so I opened the door and showed him the way to the staircase leading
up to the glass-room, and then went to the speaking-tube and called
up to Loti to expect him, and to treat him nicely, as he was the
nephew of the great Miss Larue and would, in time, be mine also."

"Was there any necessity for taking that precaution, Mr. Trent?"

"Yes. Loti has developed a dashed bad temper since last autumn and is
very eccentric, very irritable--not a bit like the solemn, sedate old
johnnie he used to be. Even his work has deteriorated, I think, but
one daren't criticise it or he flies into a temper and threatens to
leave."

"And you don't wish him to, of course--his name must stand for
something."

"It stands for a great deal. It's one of our biggest cards. We can
command twice as much for a Loti figure as for one made by any other
waxworker. So we humour him in his little eccentricities and defer
to him a great deal. Also, as he prefers to live on the premises,
he saves us money in other ways. Serves for a watchman as well, you
understand."

"Oh, he lives on the premises, does he? Where? In the glass-room?"

"Oh, no; that would not be possible. The character as well as the
position of that renders it impossible as a place of habitation. He
uses it after hours as a sort of sitting-room, to be sure, and has
partly fitted it up as one, but he sleeps, eats, and dresses in a
room on the floor below."

"Not an adjoining one?"

"Oh, no; an adjoining room would be an impossibility. Our building
is an end one, standing on the corner of a short passage which
leads to nothing but a narrow alley running along parallel with
the back of our premises, and the glass-room covers nearly the entire
roof of it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Cleek, although we call it
that at the works, the term Glass Room is a misnomer. In reality,
it's nothing more nor less than a good sized 'lean-to' greenhouse
that the dad bought and had taken up there in sections