thing (and false teeth) that came fluttering through the
letter-box. Pocket was left in such a state that he would not have backed
himself to hit the door from the stairs; and he put the chain on it,
thinking to interview the doctor over that, in the manner of old Miss
Harbottle.

So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon
him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until
Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.

He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the quarrel
was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly upon him, but
with a distressing look which he had done nothing to provoke. Not before
then was he aware of another duet between newsboys coming nearer and
nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.

"You hear that?" she whispered, as if not to drown a note.

"I do now."

"Do you hear what it is?"

Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.

"Something fresh about the murder," said he grimly.

"No; it's another one," she shuddered. "Can't you hear? 'Another awful
murder!' Now they're saying something else."

"It is something about the Park." Pocket stuck to his idea.

"And something else about some 'well-known'--I can't hear what!"

"No more can I."

"I'll open the door."

She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.
The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away
again in the distance.

"I must go out and get one," said Phillida. "Some well-known man!"

"You're not thinking of the doctor, surely?"

"I don't know! I can't think where he is."

"But you're worse than I am, if you jump to that!" said Pocket, smiling to
reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he had
shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever of
impatience.

Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six o'clock in the morning; now
it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, then
there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he might
meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not the death
of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did not alter
it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally unfounded, better
for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this criminal maniac came
to his end without public exposure of his crim