a duplicate upstairs, and you
understand that my chambers are yours too from this moment."

He handed me the latchkey and I thanked him warmly from my heart, for I
felt sure that the suggestion was made, not for any use that I should be
to him, but for my own peace of mind. I had hardly finished speaking
when a quick step on the paved walk caught my ear.

"Here is Jervis," said Thorndyke. "We will let him know that there is a
locum tenens ready to step into his shoes when he wants to be off." He
flashed the lantern across the path, and a few moments later his junior
stepped up briskly with a bundle of newspapers tucked under his arm.

It struck me that Jervis looked at me a little queerly when he
recognised me in the dim light; also that he was a trifle constrained in
his manner, as if my presence were an embarrassment. He listened to
Thorndyke's announcement of our newly made arrangement without much
enthusiasm and with none of his customary facetious comments. And again
I noticed a quick glance at me, half curious, half uneasy, and wholly
puzzling to me.

"That's all right," he said when Thorndyke had explained the situation.
"I daresay you'll find Berkeley as useful as me, and, in any case, he'll
be better here than staying on with Barnard." He spoke with unwonted
gravity, and there was in his tone a solicitude for me that attracted my
notice and that of Thorndyke as well, for the latter looked at him
curiously, though he made no comment. After a short silence, however, he
asked: "And what news does my learned brother bring? There is a mighty
shouting among the outer barbarians, and I see a bundle of newspapers
under my learned friend's arm. Has anything in particular happened?"

Jervis looked more uncomfortable than ever. "Well--yes," he replied
hesitatingly, "something has happened--there! It's no use beating about
the bush; Berkeley may as well learn it from me as from those yelling
devils outside." He took a couple of papers from his bundle and silently
handed one to me and the other to Thorndyke.

Jervis's ominous manner, naturally enough, alarmed me not a little. I
opened the paper with a nameless dread. But whatever my vague fears,
they fell far short of the occasion; and when I saw those yells from
without crystallised into scare headlines and flaming capitals I turned
for a moment sick and dizzy with fear.

The paragraph was only a short one, and I read it through in less than a
minute:

"THE MISSIN