home. Where's the key?"

"I'll give it you. You go up!" She forgets something, though, in her
hurry. His pipe remains on the table where he left it smoking, lying
across the unemptied pewter. _He_ forgets it, too, though he follows her
deliberately enough. Recollection and emergency rarely shake hands.

She meets him on the stairs coming down from the room where the
paralysed man lies, hearing but little, seeing only the walls and the
ceiling. "It's on the corner of the chimney-piece," she says. "_He's_
asleep." Daverill passes her, and just as he reaches the door remembers
the pipe. It would be fatal to call out with that single knock at the
house-door below. Too late!

She still forgets that pipe, and only waits to be sure he is through, to
open the door to the knocker. By the time she does so he has found the
key and passed through the dormer door that gives on the leads. The
paralysed man has not moved. Moreover, he cannot see the short ladder
that leads to the exit. It is on his dead side.

"You've a party here that's wanted, missis. Name of Wix or Daverill. Man
about five-and-forty. Dark hair and light eyes. Side-draw on the mouth.
Goes with a lurch. Two upper front eye-teeth missing. Carries a gold
hunting-watch on a steel chain. Wears opal ring of apparent value.
Stammers slightly." So the police-officer reads from his warrant or
instructions, which he offers to show to Miss Hawkins, who scarcely
glances at it.

Who so surprised and plausible as she? Why--her father is the only man
in the house, and him on his back this fifteen years or more! What's
more, he doesn't wear an opal ring. Nor any ring at all, for that
matter! But come in and see. Look all over the house if desired. _She_
won't stand in the way.

"Our instruction is to search," says the officer. He looks like a
sub-inspector, and is evidently what a malefactor would consider a "bad
man" to have anything to do with. Miss Hawkins knows that her right of
sanctuary, if any, is a feeble claim, probably overruled by some police
regulation; and invites the officers into the house, almost too
demonstratively. Just then she suddenly recollects that pipe.

"You can find your way in, mister," she says; and goes through to the
bar. The moment she does so the officer shows alacrity.

"Keep an eye to that cellar-flap, Jacomb," he says to his mate, and
follows the lady of the house. He is only just in time. "Is that your
father's pipe?" he asks. In another