determined. At Carberrys' there was only one clerk on the premises, and, as he briefly but distinctly informed his visitor, he was not there to do business with any one on Christmas-day. 'So you'll just have to wait for the key of No. 11 Moor Street till tomorrow morning,' was his peroration.

'Very good; it was in mere civility to Carberry that I asked the favour,' returned Mr. Brail. It will not take us five minutes to break the door open. Perhaps your employers would prefer that course. I am a detective policeman. Good morning.'

He not only got the house-key on the instant, but a little oil to make it turn softly in the lock; and on they drove.

Moor Street was as silent and dull as usual, and even a trifle duller. Its tenants were mostly in the country, keeping Christmas-or rather, having it kept for them; but No. 11 was by far the dreariest house in the street. It had been empty only a month or two, but signs of neglect, though not of decay, had become already manifest. The shuttered windows were black with dust, and in a less fashionable neighbourhood (where street-boys are allowed) would undoubtedly have been broken. Under the sheltering porch the accumulated mud looked filthier by contrast with the surrounding snow.

Mr. Brail got out first and opened the door; one policeman swiftly followed him, and the other remained in the cab, with his eye on the area steps. If he had been seen outside, and on the watch, there would have been a ten-deep semicircle of spectators round him in as many seconds.

Within No. 11 all was not so neglected as without. Much to their astonishment, the hall was furnished in the ordinary manner, but it struck damp and cold, and, quietly as the two men closed the door behind them, the sound reverberated through the house. With one hasty glance around him Mr. Brail led the way upstairs, exploring room after room, while his companion remained on the landing, lest a rabbit should bolt from the burrow by some second hole. If they spoke to one another it was in whispers, and when they replied it was in monosyllables, or more often by a mere gesture. There was not a living thing to be seen except the spiders; nor was there an article of furniture save, as we have said, in the hall. In the drawing-room, the faded splendours of the ceilings and the carved marble of the mantelpieces rendered the surrounding barrenness still more marked.

Returning to the hall floor, they still found no traces of recent tenancy, and they explored the kitchen and offices with the same result. The caretaker, as Mr. Brown had called him, had either only visited his charge occasionally, or was a man

strangely indifferent, for one of his calling, to his personal comfort.

'There is not a soul in the place,' observed the policeman, speaking above his breath for the first time.

'I am sure I don't know,' returned Mr. Brail coolly. "We have not tried the cellar.'

The door, which was next the pantry and in the centre of the house, as cellar-doors should be, was locked. Mr. Brail stooped down and examined the jambs and the keyhole. This has been opened recently,' he observed coolly. Light your lantern and keep your staff handy. Now give me the jemmy.'

In two minutes, by aid of this ingenious instrument, the door was forced open, and discovered a flight of steps leading into darkness. The atmosphere was close and, by comparison with that of the outer air, even warm. They descended the steps, and presently the policeman's bullseye flashed upon a human figure lying on a mattress and wrapped in a railway-rug. His face was white and wan, and his eyes gazed vacantly upon the light and them.

'I thought so!' exclaimed Mr. Brail, allowing himself a momentary gratification at the confirmation of his own astuteness. 'It is the very man.'

'The Butterfly Wing will do it,' murmured the prostrate figure. 'The mistake was in the head of the Nut.'

The gent is drunk,' observed the policeman, with a shake of the head that suggested something more than reprobation-a pathetic regret that the circumstances did not permit of the other's being taken into custody-run in.'

Go to Dr. Creyke, you fool; he lives at No. 6 in the next street; bring him here immediately,' cried Mr. Brail with a contempt that bordered on savagery. Then he knelt down tenderly enough by the side of the mattress, and, pulling a flask from his pocket, applied it to Matthew's lips.

'You shall have soup at Carberrys', my poor fellow, if I make it out of that young man's liver,' he murmured consolingly; 'and then you shall be took home.'