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perhaps you wish to go? I don’t think anybody would harm you. I rather fancy they would be glad to see the back of you.”
    “Harm me?” said Gaylor indignantly, but Reeder took no notice of the interruption.
    “My own idea is that I should brew a dish of tea, and possibly fry a few eggs. I am a little hungry.”
    Gaylor walked to the door and frowned out into the darkness. He had worked with Reeder before, and was too wise a man to reject the advice summarily. Besides, if Reeder was entering or had entered the Public Prosecutor’s Department, he would occupy a rank equivalent to superintendent.
    “I’m all for eggs,” said Gaylor, and bolted the outer door.
    The older man disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a kettle, which he placed upon the fire, went out again and returned with a frying-pan.
    “Do you ever take your hat off?” asked Gaylor curiously.
    Mr Reeder did not turn his head, but shook the pan gently to ensure an even distribution of the boiling fat.
    “Very rarely,” he said. “On Christmas Days sometimes.”
    And then Gaylor asked a fatuous question; at least, it sounded fatuous to him, and yet subconsciously he felt that the other might supply an immediate answer.
    “Who killed Wentford?”
    “Two men, possibly three,” said Mr Reeder instantly; “but I rather think two. Neither was a professional burglar. One at any rate thought more of the killing than of any profit he might have got out of it. Neither found anything worth taking, and even if they had opened the safe they would have discovered nothing of value. The young lady, Miss Margot Lynn, could, I think, have saved them a lot of trouble in their search for treasure – I may be mistaken here, but I rarely fall into error. Miss Margot is–”
    He stopped, looked round quickly.
    “What is it?” asked Gaylor, but Reeder put his finger to his lips.
    He rose, moving across the room to the door which led to the tiny lobby through which he had made his entrance. He stood with one hand on the knob, and Gaylor saw that in the other was a Browning pistol. Slowly he turned the handle. The door was locked from the inside.
    In two strides Reeder was at the front door, turned the key and pulled it open. Then, to the inspector’s amazement, he saw his companion take one step and fall sprawling on his face in the snow. He ran to his assistance. Something caught him by the ankle and flung him forward.
    Reeder was on his feet and assisted the other to rise.
    “A little wire fastened between the door posts,” he explained.
    A bright beam shot out from his electric torch as he turned the corner of the house. There was nobody in sight, but the window, which he had fastened, was open, and there were new footprints in the snow leading away into the darkness.
    “Well, I’m damned!” said Gaylor.
    J G Reeder said nothing. He was smiling when he came back into the room, having stopped to break the wire with a kick.
    “Do you think somebody was in the lobby?”
    “I know somebody was in the lobby,” he said. “Dear me! How foolish of us not to have had a policeman posted outside the door! You notice that a pane of glass has been cut? Our friend must have been listening there.”
    “Was there only one?”
    “Only one,” said Mr Reeder gravely. “But was he the one who came that way before – I don’t think so.”
    He took the frying-pan from the hearth where he had put it and resumed his frying of eggs, served them on two plates and brewed the tea. It was just as though death had not lurked in that lobby a few minutes before.
    “No, they won’t come back; there is no longer a reason for our staying. There were two, but only one came into the house. The roads are very heavy, and they may have a long way to travel, and they would not risk being anywhere near at daybreak. At six o’clock the agricultural labourer of whom the poet Gray wrote so charmingly will be on his way to work, and they won’t risk meeting him either.”
    They