hundred yards of home.
Plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly
on the still air:

"Mr. Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!"

The lodger stopped and turned round.

He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.

"Ah! So it's you, Mr. Bunting? I heard footsteps behind me, and
I hurried on. I wish I'd known that it was you; there are so many
queer characters about at night in London."

"Not on a night like this, sir. Only honest folk who have business
out of doors would be out such a night as this. It is cold, sir!"

And then into Bunting's slow and honest mind there suddenly crept
the query as to what on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be
on this bitter night.

"Cold?" the lodger repeated; he was panting a little, and his words
came out sharp and quick through his thin lips. "I can't say that
I find it cold, Mr. Bunting. When the snow falls, the air always
becomes milder."

"Yes, sir; but to-night there's such a sharp east wind. Why, it
freezes the very marrow in one's bones! Still, there's nothing like
walking in cold weather to make one warm, as you seem to have found,
sir."

Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange
way; he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it,
on the wall side, to his landlord.

"I lost my way," he said abruptly. "I've been over Primrose Hill to
see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad,
and then, coming back, I lost my way."

Now they had come right up to the little gate which opened on the
shabby, paved court in front of the house--that gate which now was
never locked.

Mr. Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged
path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping
aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front
door for him.

As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting's bare left hand
brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the lodger was
wearing, and, to Bunting's surprise, the stretch of cloth against
which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp maybe from
stray flakes of snow which had settled upon it, but wet--wet and
gluey.

Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
that he placed the key in the lock of the door.

The two men passed into the hall together.

The house seemed blackly dark in comparison w