the street. On either hand rose the walls of buildings.

"I told Matthews of the situation up at the Mill House. Neither of us was able to understand why you had not telephoned for assistance--we only discovered later that the telephone had been disconnected--but I went bail that you were up against a very stiff proposition. I told Matthews that, by surrounding the house, we might capture the whole gang.

"Matthews is a cautious cuss and he wanted a good deal of persuading, so we lost a lot of time. In the end, he wouldn't take my advice to rush every available man to the scene, but only consented to take two plainclothes men and two military police. He was so precious afraid of upsetting your arrangements. The Chief, it appears, had warned everybody against doing that. So we all piled into the car and I drove them back to the Mill House.

"This time I left the car at the front gate and we went up to the house on foot. We had arranged that Matthews and one of the military police, both armed, should stay and guard the car, while the two plainclothes men and the other military policeman, the corporal here, should accompany me to the house. Matthews believed my yarn that we were only going to 'investigate.' What I intended to do in reality was to round up the whole blessed lot.

"I put one of the plain-clothes men on the front door and the other round at the back of the house. Their orders were to stop anybody who came out and at the same time to whistle for assistance. The corporal and I went to our old observation post outside the library window.

"The moment I glanced into the room I knew that matters had reached a climax. I saw you--looking pretty blue, old man--facing that woman who seemed to be denouncing you. Max stood beside you with a pistol, and beside him was our friend, Mortimer, with a regular whopper of an automatic. Before I had time to move, the plain-clothes man at the back of the house whistled. He had found the secret door with Bellward and the woman coming out of it.

Then I saw Mortimer fire point-blank at you. I had my gun out in a second, but I was afraid of shooting, for fear of hitting you as you went for the other man.

"But the corporal at my side wasn't worrying much about you. Just as you jumped he put up his gun and let fly at Mortimer with a sense of discrimination which does him infinite credit. He missed Mortimer, but plugged Max plumb through the forehead and my old friend dropped in his tracks right between you and the other fellow. On that we hacked our way through the French window. The corporal found time to have another shot and laid out a tall, odd-looking man..."

"... When we got inside we found him dead across the threshold of the door leading into the hall. Behrend we caught hiding in a brush cupboard by the back stairs. As for the others--"