is little courtyard from the pavement.

Now, under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have rushed forward
to drive out whoever was there. He and his wife had often had
trouble, before the cold weather began, with vagrants seeking shelter
there. But to-night he stayed outside, listening intently, sick
with suspense and fear.

Was it possible that their place was being watched--already? He
thought it only too likely. Bunting, like Mrs. Bunting, credited
the police with almost supernatural powers, especially since he
had paid that visit to Scotland Yard.

But to Bunting's amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
suddenly loomed up in the dim light.

Mr. Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form
had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the
low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door.

The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked
along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of
hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow
path.

Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was
his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall. Mr.
Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new
boots, and then he had gone inside the gate and had put them on,
placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had
been wrapped.

The ex-butler waited--waited quite a long time, not only until Mr.
Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had
time to get well away, upstairs.

Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in
the door. He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and
coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out
to him. Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table,
he said sullenly: "There it is! You can see it all for yourself--
not that there's very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.

His wife looked at him in sharp alarm. "Whatever have you done to
yourself?" she exclaimed. "You're ill--that's what it is, Bunting.
You got a chill last night!"

"I told you I'd got a chill," he muttered. "'Twasn't last night,
though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus.
Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse--
that's what she does. 'Twas going out from there into the biting
wind, that's what did for me. It must be awful to stand abo