et him up; be careful with
him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."

The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.

But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.

The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
hatch along its groove.

Then he took an involuntary step back again.

Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.

"Ah!" said the inspector.

To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.

He went into the small hall.

"All right!" he called.

They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....

"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....

Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
words--something about "used in evidence against yo