ene of the forenoon. She spoke to him once
or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened, but he could scarcely
look her in the face. Otherwise both meals interested him; they were
German in their order, a light supper following the substantial middle-day
repast; but it appeared that they both came from an Italian restaurant,
and the English boy was much taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which
the dishes arrived smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of
speculation when he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the
house, and that the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor's
waste-paper basket as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed
next morning. He had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young
girl was clearing away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room
after supper; and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the
toy board, which they placed between them on the dining-table, both
Phillida and the fragments had disappeared.

The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out
Baumgartner's simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy's simplicity.
Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate one; his brows
would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his hand obey, as
though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep between life and
death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate concentration; even
the Turk's head was only lit to be laid aside as an obstruction. Pocket's
one chance was to hit hard and trust to the fortune that accrues on a
small table. Both played to win, and the boy forgot everything when he
actually succeeded in the last game. They had played very late for him,
and he slept without stirring until Baumgartner came to his room about
eight o'clock next morning.

Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first thing
he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one like a
flag to wake him.

"Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!" he
cried, with fierce amusement; "it only remains to be seen whether they
succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really,
it's almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the
smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!"

"May I see?" asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these
remarks.

"Certainly," re