quaffing whisky and puffing cigars as if they meant to
make a night of it. At two o'clock someone suggested that it was high
time they thought of bed, and Belton rose with them.

"'Before we turn in, let's have another search,' he said. 'It's strange
you should all hear that noise except me--unless, of course, it came
from below.'

"'But there's nothing under me,' Brady remarked, 'except the Dining
Hall.'

"'Then let's search that,' Belton went on. 'We ought to make a thorough
job of it now we've once begun. Besides, I don't relish being in this
lonely place with that laugh "knocking" around, any more than you do.'

"He went with them, and they completely overhauled the ground
floor--hall, dining-room, studies, passages, vestibules, everywhere that
was not barred to them; but they were no wiser at the end of their
search than at the beginning; there was not the slightest clue as to the
author of the laugh.

* * * * *

"On the morrow there was a fresh shock. One of the College servants, on
entering Mr. Maguire's rooms to call him, found that gentleman half
dressed and lying on the floor.

"Terrified beyond measure, the servant bent over him and discovered he
was dead, obviously stabbed with the same weapon that had put an end to
Bob Anderson.

"The factotum at once gave the alarm. Everyone in the College came
trooping to the room, and for the second time within three days a
general hue and cry was raised. All, again, to no purpose--the murderer
had left no traces as to his identity. However, one thing at least was
established, and that was the innocence of Dean Kelly and Denis
O'Farroll. They were both liberated.

"Then Hartnoll, who seems to have been a regular Sherlock Holmes, got to
work in grim earnest. On the floor in Maguire's room he picked up a
diminutive silver-topped pencil, which had rolled under the fender and
had so escaped observation. He asked several of Maguire's most intimate
friends if they remembered seeing the pencil-case in Maguire's
possession, but they shook their heads. He enquired in other quarters,
too, but with no better result, and finally resolved to ask Brady, who
belonged to quite a different set from himself. With that object in view
he set off to Brady's room shortly after supper. As there was no
response to his raps, he at length opened Brady's door. In front of the
hearth in a big easy chair sat a figure.

"'Brady, by all that's holy,' Hartno