ck of sick headache, the result of the
fumes rising from the wax he was melting to model figures for the
tableau, together with the smell of the chemicals used in preparing
the background, and that he went down to his room to lie down for a
time and dropped off to sleep. As a matter of fact, he was there
in his room sleeping when, at half-past six, I went for the boy,
and, finding the glass-room vacated, naturally set out to hunt up
Loti and question him about the matter."

"When you called up to the glass-room through the speaking-tube, to
say that the boy was about to go up, who answered you--Loti?"

"Yes."

"At what time was that? Or can't you say positively?"

"Not to the fraction of a moment. But I should say that it was
about four or five minutes before the boy got there--say about
five-and-twenty minutes past four. It wouldn't take him longer to
get up to the top of the house, I fancy, and he certainly did not
stop at any of the other departments on the way."

"Queer, isn't it, that the man should not have stopped to so much as
welcome the boy after you had been at such pains to tell him to be
nice to him? Does he offer any explanation on that score?"

"Yes. He says that, as his head was so bad, he knew that he would
probably be cross and crotchety; so as I had asked him to be kind,
he thought the best thing he could do was to leave a note on the
table for the boy, telling him to make himself at home and to examine
anything he pleased, but to be sure not to touch the cauldron in
which the wax was simmering, as it tilted readily and he might get
scalded. He was sorry to have to go, but his head ached so badly that
he really had to lie down for a while.

"That note, I may tell you, was lying on the table when I went up to
the glass-room and failed to find the boy. It was that which told
me where to go in order to find Loti and question him. I'll do him
the credit of stating that when he heard of the boy's mysterious
disappearance he flung his headache and his creature comforts to
the winds and joined in the eager hunt for him as excitedly and as
strenuously as anybody. He went through the building from top to
bottom; he lifted every trapdoor, crept into every nook and corner
and hole and box into which it might be possible for the poor little
chap to have fallen. But it was all useless, Mr. Cleek--every
bit of it! The boy had vanished, utterly and completely; from the
minute the porter saw him pass the swi