r measurements?" he asked.

"None at all," I answered promptly, and this time I told the truth.

"You wouldn't understand this then," he ran on, indicating the paper,
though he was careful not to let me have another look at it.

"I saw some of it," I said off-handedly, as if it were no affair of
mine, "and it looked to me like the sort of thing a mathematician would
see if he ever got the willies."

"You have a most expressive way of putting things, Carstairs," he said
with a smile. There was more than humor in that smile; there was
something in it that looked remarkably like relief.

"I can't stand figures of any sort," I volunteered with a fervent hope
in my heart that I wasn't over-doing my part. "A sheet of them'd just
about give me the D.Ts."

He laughed out loud at that and then, expressing a hope that I would
make myself at home, he padded out of the room. It was astonishing how
quietly he could walk when he was moving about the house. For all his
gross bulk there was something furtive and cat-like about him that told
me just how insistent must be the menace of a sudden death. He moved so
silently that I never knew he was there until I looked up and saw him.
He glided from room to room like some obese ghost. At first it got on my
nerves, but pretty soon I settled down to it, and in a day or so got
quite used to seeing a silent bulk sliding noiselessly about the house,
appearing at all sorts of odd times in all sorts of queer places.

The cook returned about 5 o'clock and seemed rather inclined to take up
a high-handed attitude with me, until a few well-chosen words from her
master quietened her down a little. She was not slow to show me in other
ways that she regarded me as an intruder in the house, and if any one
thing about me was more preferable than another it was my room rather
than my company. Still as I kept out of her way as much as possible, and
as my sole duties consisted in keeping an eye on all strangers that
approached the place and in listening for any unaccountable sounds, I
came into conflict with her very seldom.

Matters progressed so quietly for the next couple of days that I began
to wonder whether I had not fallen into a sinecure after all. Bryce had
procured me a decent outfit so that I was now my own man again, ready to
argue the right-of-way with all comers. Added to that my feet were well
on the mend and my general health was keeping pretty near to the
top-notch mark, so I wasn't