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it was so late. I promised I'd go and help Murdoch fix up his wireless. So long———" and he disappeared, giving a slight tug at Reeves' coat as he left.

He did not seem, however, to be in a hurry to redeem his promise. Instead, he made straight for Marryatt's room, taking the stairs three at a time; and his proceedings in Marryatt's room were sufficiently curious to be worth recording in detail. First, he took two out of the three pipes which lay there, and hid them carefully behind the coal-scuttle. Then he pulled the remaining pipe in half; picked a strand or two of tobacco out of the nearest tin, and rammed these tightly down the stem of the pipe, close to the mouthpiece. There were a couple of feathers on the mantelpiece; these he unscrupulously put in his pocket. And, "Now, my friend," he said to himself out loud, as he left the room, "I think we've spiked your guns. I for one shall be surprised if you don't come along hunting for pipe-cleaners." And so he went down and rejoined Reeves in the deserted billiard-room.

The Committee had not yet decided what action to take about the secret passage, and it was with no difficulty that the two friends entered it again from the billiard-room end, and made their way along it, guided by Reeves' torch. If it had lost its thrill of human mystery, it had acquired instead a kind of impersonal dreariness. One had not looked for ghosts, when one was expecting a murderer to be lurking there; now, you caught your