he remained in sight, Cleek's narrowed eyes
followed him and the tense creases seamed Cleek's indrawn, silent lips.
But when he broke that silence it was to speak to the captain and to say
some silly, pointless thing about that refuge of the witless--the
weather.

"Bridewell," he said ten minutes later, when, upon Aunt Ruth's objecting
to it being done indoors, the lieutenant invited him to come outside for
a smoke, "Bridewell, tell me something: Where does your father sleep?"

"Dad? Oh, upstairs in the big front room just above us. Why?"

"Nothing, but, I've a whim to see the place, and without anybody's
knowledge. Can you take me there?"

"Certainly. Come along," replied the lieutenant, and led the way round
to a back staircase and up that to the room in question. It was a pretty
room, hung with an artistic pink paper which covered not only the
original walls but the wooden partitions which blocked up the door
leading to Dr. Fordyce's own part of the house; and close against that
partition and so placed that the screening canopy shut out the glare
from the big bay window, stood a narrow brass bedstead equipped with the
finest of springs, the very acme of luxury and ease in the way of soft
mattresses, and so piled with down pillows that a king might have envied
it for a resting-place.

Cleek looked at it for a moment in silence, then reached out and laid
his hand upon the papered partition.

"What's on the other side of this?" he queried. "Does it lead into a
passage or a room?"

"Into Fordyce's laboratory," replied the lieutenant. "As a matter of
fact, this used to be Fordyce's own bedroom, the best in the house. But
he gave it up especially for the dad's use as the view and the air are
better than in any other room in the place, he says, and he's a great
believer in that sort of thing for sick people. Ripping of him, wasn't
it?"

"Very. Suppose you could get your father not to sleep here to-night for
a change?"

"Wouldn't like to try. He fairly dotes on that comfortable soft bed.
There's not another to compare with it in the house. I'm sure he
wouldn't rest half so well on a harder one, and wouldn't give this one
up unless he was compelled to do so by some unforeseen accident."

"Good," said Cleek. "Then there is going to be 'some unforeseen
accident'--look!" With that he stripped down the counterpane, lifted the
water-jug from the washstand and emptied its contents over the
mattresses, and when the poo