[Illustration:  “Where is this man?” he demanded. Page 152.]

Arnold, who followed, was stricken speechless.  Fenella gave a little cry.  The couch had been wheeled back to its place.  The body of the man had disappeared!

“Where is the burglar?” Mr. Weatherley repeated, irritably.  “Was there ever any one here?  Who in the name of mischief left that window open?”

The window through which Arnold had entered the room was now wide open.  They hurried towards it.  Outside, all was darkness.  There was no sound of footsteps, no sign of any person about.  Mr. Weatherley was distinctly annoyed.

“I should have thought you would have had more sense, Chetwode,” he said, testily.  “You found a burglar here, and, instead of securing him properly, you send up to me and go ringing up for doctors, and in the meantime the man calmly slips off through the window.”

Arnold made no reply.  Mr. Weatherley’s words seemed to come from a long way off.  He was looking at Fenella.

“The man was dead!” he muttered.

She, too, was white, but she shook her head.

“We thought so,” she answered.  “We were wrong.”

Mr. Weatherley led the way to the front door.

“As the dead man seems to have cleared out,” he said, “without taking very much with him, I suggest that we go to bed.  Groves had better ring up the doctor and stop him, if he can; if not, he must explain that he was sent for in error.  Good night, Chetwode!” he added, pointedly.

Arnold scarcely remembered his farewells.  He passed out into the street and stood for several moments upon the pavement.  He looked back at the house.

“The man was dead or dying!” he muttered to himself.  “What does it all mean?”

He walked slowly away.  There was a policeman on the other side of the road, taxicabs and carriages coming and going.  He passed the gate of Pelham Lodge and looked back toward the window of the sitting-room.  Within five minutes the man must have left that room by the window.  That he could have left it unaided, even if alive, was impossible.  Yet there was not anything in the avenue, or thereabouts, to denote that anything unusual had occurred.  He was on the point of turning away when a sudden thought struck him.  He re-entered the gate softly and walked up the drive.  Arrived at within a few feet of the window, he paused and turned to the right.  A narrow path led him into a shrubbery.  A few more yards and he reached a wire fence.  Stepping across it, he found himself in the next garden.  Here he paused for a moment and listened.  The house before which he stood was smaller than Pelham Lodge, and woefully out of repair.  The grass on the lawn was long and dank—­even the board containing the notice “To Let” had fallen flat, and lay among it as in a jungle.  The paths were choked with weeds, the windows were black and curtainless.  He made his way to the