’I fancy there is,—­I feel sure there is.—­Anyhow, listen to my story.  Yesterday morning, before breakfast,—­to be accurate, between eight and nine, I looked out of the window, and I saw a crowd in the street.  I sent Peter out to see what was the matter.  He came back and said there was a man in a fit.  I went out to look at the man in the fit.  I found, lying on the ground, in the centre of the crowd, a man who, but for the tattered remnants of what had apparently once been a cloak, would have been stark naked.  He was covered with dust, and dirt, and blood,—­a dreadful sight.  As you know, I have had my smattering of instruction in First Aid to the Injured, and that kind of thing, so, as no one else seemed to have any sense, and the man seemed as good as dead, I thought I would try my hand.  Directly I knelt down beside him, what do you think he said?’

‘Thank you.’

’Nonsense.—­He said, in such a queer, hollow, croaking voice, “Paul Lessingham.”  I was dreadfully startled.  To hear a perfect stranger, a man in his condition, utter that name in such a fashion—­to me, of all people in the world!—­took me aback.  The policeman who was holding his head remarked, “That’s the first time he’s opened his mouth.  I thought he was dead.”  He opened his mouth a second time.  A convulsive movement went all over him, and he exclaimed, with the strangest earnestness, and so loudly that you might have heard him at the other end of the street, “Be warned, Paul Lessingham, be warned!” It was very silly of me, perhaps, but I cannot tell you how his words, and his manner—­the two together—­affected me.—­Well, the long and the short of it was, that I had him taken into the house, and washed, and put to bed,—­and I had the doctor sent for.  The doctor could make nothing of it at all.  He reported that the man seemed to be suffering from some sort of cataleptic seizure,—­I could see that he thought it likely to turn out almost as interesting a case as I did.’

‘Did you acquaint your father with the addition to his household?’

She looked at me, quizzically.

’You see, when one has such a father as mine one cannot tell him everything, at once.  There are occasions on which one requires time.’

I felt that this would be wholesome hearing for old Lindon.

’Last night, after papa and I had exchanged our little courtesies,—­which, it is to be hoped, were to papa’s satisfaction, since they were not to be mine—­I went to see the patient.  I was told that he had neither eaten nor drunk, moved nor spoken.  But, so soon as I approached his bed, he showed signs of agitation.  He half raised himself upon his pillow, and he called out, as if he had been addressing some large assembly—­I can’t describe to you the dreadful something which was in his voice, and on his face,—­“Paul Lessingham!—­Beware!—­The Beetle!"’

When she said that, I was startled.

‘Are you sure those were the words he used?’