old and
orderly salon. "Makes me think of funerals."

"Yes, that room is always like that, only used as a reception-room for
patients."

She flung open the door of the salle a manger and entered, then
stopped, looking about her.

"This looks as though Jacques had been entertaining his friends," she
said, pointing to the collection of bottles on the sideboard and the
syphon and whisky decanter on the table.

"By Jove, it does!"

Roger ran his eyes over the miniature bar.

"Martini vermouth, Noilly Prat, Gordon gin, Angostura, Bacardi rum,
absinthe--pre-war, at that. If your Jacques mixes all these drinks----"

"I never saw Jacques take anything except a little _vin ordinaire_,"
Esther replied, shaking her head. "But there have certainly been two
people here, whoever they were, for here are their two glasses."

As she spoke she picked up the tumblers from the table one after the
other and examined them thoughtfully. One, she discovered, had had
only soda-water in it, there was a little in the bottom now, with a
cigarette-end floating about--a cigarette with a red tip, half uncurled
from the wet. She frowned at it for a moment, then went to the
book-shelves in search of her books, which she discovered among a pile
of medical journals.

"Here they are. Shall we go?"

Roger was examining the tumbler she had recently set down.

"Jacques also seems to have a nice taste in cigarettes," he remarked.
"Extravagant fellow altogether."

He indicated the floor, which was littered with stubs, mostly
cork-tipped, though there was an occasional scarlet tip here and there.

"Jacques smokes only those cheap Marylands that come in a blue packet,"
Esther replied, laughing. "You see I'm acquainted with all his habits.
No, I can't believe it is Jacques who's been here; it looks as
though..."

She stopped and, bending down, picked up a tiny object from the rug.

"There was a woman, at any rate," she mused, with a considerable degree
of curiosity in her voice, "for here is a hairpin."

It was a little bronze one of the "invisible" sort. Utterly unable to
comprehend any woman's being in this house, she turned the hairpin over
wonderingly. Then she noticed that her companion was staring up at the
ceiling with a frown on his face.

"S'sh," he cautioned, laving a hand on her arm. "I thought I heard..."

"_Who the hell is that down there? Answer, or I'll shoot!_"

They jumped guiltily, astonished at the sudden angr