mayn’t, and it may be nothing but a trick of our friend the conjurer’s to get us away from this elegant abode of his.  He’s done me twice already, I don’t want to be done again,—­and I distinctly do not want him to return and find me missing.  He’s quite capable of taking the hint, and removing himself into the Ewigkeit,—­when the clue to as pretty a mystery as ever I came across will have vanished.’

‘I can stay,’ I said.

‘You?—­Alone?’

He eyed me doubtingly,—­evidently not altogether relishing the proposition.

’Why not?  You might send the first person you meet,—­policeman, cabman, or whoever it is—­to keep me company.  It seems a pity now that we dismissed that cab.’

‘Yes, it does seem a pity.’  Sydney was biting his lip.  ’Confound that fellow! how fast he moves.’

Mr Holt was already nearing the end of the road.

’If you think it necessary, by all means follow to see where he goes,—­you are sure to meet somebody whom you will be able to send before you have gone very far.’

‘I suppose I shall.—­You won’t mind being left alone?’

‘Why should I?—­I’m not a child.’

Mr Holt, reaching the corner, turned it, and vanished out of sight.  Sydney gave an exclamation of impatience.

’If I don’t make haste I shall lose him.  I’ll do as you suggest—­ dispatch the first individual I come across to hold watch and ward with you.’

‘That’ll be all right.’

He started off at a run,—­shouting to me as he went.

‘It won’t be five minutes before somebody comes!’

I waved my hand to him.  I watched him till he reached the end of the road.  Turning, he waved his hand to me.  Then he vanished, as Mr Holt had done.

And I was alone.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE TERROR BY DAY

My first impulse, after Sydney’s disappearance, was to laugh.  Why should he display anxiety on my behalf merely because I was to be the sole occupant of an otherwise empty house for a few minutes more or less,—­and in broad daylight too!  To say the least, the anxiety seemed unwarranted.

I lingered at the gate, for a moment or two, wondering what was at the bottom of Mr Holt’s singular proceedings, and what Sydney really proposed to gain by acting as a spy upon his wanderings.  Then I turned to re-enter the house.  As I did so, another problem suggested itself to my mind,—­what connection, of the slightest importance, could a man in Paul Lessingham’s position have with the eccentric being who had established himself in such an unsatisfactory dwelling-place?  Mr Holt’s story I had only dimly understood,—­it struck me that it would require a deal of understanding.  It was more like a farrago of nonsense, an outcome of delirium, than a plain statement of solid facts.  To tell the truth, Sydney had taken it more seriously than I expected.  He seemed to see something in it which I emphatically did not.  What was double Dutch to me, seemed clear as print to him.  So far as I could judge, he actually had the presumption to imagine that Paul —­my Paul!—­Paul Lessingham!—­the great Paul Lessingham!—­was mixed up in the very mysterious adventures of poor, weak-minded, hysterical Mr Holt, in a manner which was hardly to his credit.