acts as secretary to this Mr. Moole. The
secret of the Secret House is pretty clear; it is a private lunatic
asylum,--that, and nothing else."

T. B. thought for a while.

"At any rate no harm can be done by interviewing this cloistered Mr.
Moole, or by inspecting the house," he said.

He arrived in Great Bradley in the early part of the afternoon, and
drove straight away to the Secret House. The flyman put him down at some
distance from the big entrance gate, and he made a careful and cautious
reconnaissance of the vicinity. The house was a notable one. It made no
pretence at architectural beauty, standing back from the road, and in
the very centre of a fairly uncultivated patch of ground. All that
afternoon he measured and observed the peculiarities of the approach,
the lie of the ground, the entrances, and the exits, and had obtained
too a cautious and careful observation of the great electrical power
house, which stood in a clump of trees about a hundred yards from the
house itself.

The next morning he paid a more open visit. This time his fly put him
down at the gateway of the house, and he moved slowly up the gravel
pathway to the big front entrance door. He glanced at the tip of the
power house chimney which showed over the trees, and shook his head in
some doubt. He had furtively inspected the enormous plant which the
eccentric owner of the Secret House had found it necessary to lay down.

"Big enough to run an electric railway," was his mental comment. He had
seen, too, the one-eyed engineer, a saturnine man with a disfiguring
scar down one side of his face, and a trick of showing his teeth on one
side of his mouth when he smiled.

T. B. would have pursued his investigations further, but suddenly he had
felt something click under his feet, as he stood peering in at the
window, and instantly a gong had clanged, and a shutter dropped
noiselessly behind the window, cutting off all further view.

T. B. had retired hastily and had cleared the gates just before they
swung to, obviously operated by somebody in the power house.

His present visit was less furtive and it was in broad daylight, with
two detectives ostentatiously posted at the gates, that he made his
call--for he took no unnecessary risks.

He walked up the four broad marble steps to the portico of the house,
and wiped his feet upon a curious metal mat as he pressed the bell. The
door itself was half hidden by a hanging curtain, such as one may