Apparently, this young lady was not only the patron-saint of the bar, but the magnet that reassembled. the sparse male population of the district.

Mrs. Oates took advantage of her privileged position to ask another more personal question.

“And what will your other lady say, if you spend your last night away?”

“My other-what?” demanded Stephen.

“Mrs. Newton.”

“Mrs. Newton Warren is a respectable married lady. She will naturally pass the evening in the company of her lawful husband, working out mathematical problems… .

“Did you have a good tea?”

Helen did not hear the question, for she suddenly glimpsed an exciting possibility.

“Did Miss Warren have her tea up in the bedroom?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” replied Stephen. “Then she’s been up there for ages. I wonder if I might, offer to relieve her?”

“If you do,” advised Stephen, “see that she’s supplied with cushions. Unless, of course, you’re expert in dodging.”

“But does she always throw things at people?” asked Helen incredulously..

“It’s the only way she knows of expressing her temperament.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I think she sounds so alive for an old woman. I admire that.”,

“You’ll be disillusioned,” prophesied Stephen. “She’s a vile-tempered old cuss, with horrible manners. When I was presented to Her Majesty, she was eating an orange, and she spat out all the pips-to impress me.”

He broke off to laugh at a sudden recollection.

“All the same,” he said, “I’d love to have seen her chuck the basin at that pie-faced nurse.”

“But, surely, that was an accident. She couldn’t have known she was going to hit her.”

Mrs. Oates looked up, with streaming eyes, from her task of peeling onions.

“Oh, no, miss,” she said. “Lady Warren wouldn’t miss. When she was younger, she spent all her time tramping over the fields, shooting rabbits and birds. They said she went to bed with her gun.”

“Then she’s been here a long time?” asked Helen.

She believed that her curiosity was about to be given a real meal, for Mrs. Oates’ manner hinted at gossip.

Stephen rolled a cigarette—the cat purred on the rug the mouse washed his face, in the safety of his hole. Inside was firelight and tranquillity-outside, the rising storm.

A gust of wind smashed against the corner of the house, and spattered the unbarred shutter, before the passage window, with the remnants of its original fury. Slowly, as though pushed open by invisible fingers, the casement swung outwards over the garden. The house was open to the night.

It looked in, through the gap, and down the darkness of the passage. Its far end stretched away into shadows. Round the bend, was the warren of the offices-a honeycomb of cells, where a man could hide.

Inside the kitchen, Mrs. Oates electrified her audience.

“They do say,” she said dramatically, “as old Lady Warren shot her husband.”

“No,” gasped Stephen and Helen together.

“Yes,” declared Mrs. Oates. “It’s an old wives’ tale now, but my mother told me all about it. Old Sir Roger was just such a one as the Professor, quiet, and always shut up with his books. He made a lot of money with some invention.. He built the Summit, so as to have no neighbors.