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long grey coat. Her fur neckpiece had seen many winters. There was a little veil tied about her hat-brim which partly obscured the upper part of her face. Her eyes were wide behind it as she looked up at the two men; but they shifted like a nervous animal's.
    "Good night," said Gamadge cheerfully.
    "Good night."
    Colby did not greet her at all. He said, as they went downstairs, "I hate leaving those two together."
    "They won't be together long."
    "Thank goodness you persuaded Mrs. Gregson to go up to that place; but I wish you hadn't sounded so doubtful of the outcome."
    "Do you really think I shall find out who put grease on those cellar stairs, or poison in that mackerel? Or solve the problem of the gas oven and the fruit cake?" He glared malevolently at Colby.
    "You ought to be able to dig up something." Colby, following him out of the house and along the alley, looked unhappy. "You're in the deuce of a hurry, anyhow. Have you an idea?"
    "I'm in the deuce of a hurry to get home and get to a fire." Gamadge strode out from under the archway, and looked up and down the street for a cab. "You coming? Clara'll be glad to see you."
    "I must get to Bellfield. I'll just make my train."
    "Good luck to the huntin' and fishin', not to mention the ridin'. Pretty soon you'll be makin' a snow man."
    Colby refused to respond to this childishness. He hurried off to get a cab on Third Avenue; Gamadge, after a long look after him, turned and walked towards Lexington.

CHAPTER FOUR
Gregson Laughed
    G AMADGE ENTERED THE LIBRARY of his old house in the Sixties, and found himself walking on a sea of papers. Furniture stood up from among them like reefs at low tide, and an island in front of the fire contained a tea table and Gamadge's old coloured servant Theodore. He was clearing the tea tray.
    "I'd like some of that before it goes, if you don't mind." The master of the house lifted his right foot from a pile of autograph letters signed.
    "Right away, Mist' Gamadge, sir; get you some fresh." Theodore hurried out, ignoring the activities on the other side of the large room, where Mrs. Gamadge sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands full of manuscript, and Harold Bantz, Gamadge's young assistant, prowled on all fours among documents. Martin the cat, devoted to paper in any form, lay at full length on a bed of parchment, occasionally putting out a paw to make it rustle; when it did so he rolled over and slapped at the noise with an air of reproof. Sun, the chow, sat near his mistress and seemed to supervise her labours. He paid no attention to Martin; he had learned to forget him.
    Mrs. Gamadge raised her ingenuous face to her husband. "Isn't this nice?" she inquired. "I thought it would be so cosy to do the Bendow correspondence up here."
    "Well: the trestle tables in the laboratory are practically ideal for sorting papers," said Gamadge mildly. "That's why I bought them."
    Harold, a youth of short stature and morose countenance, stolidly and silently continued to crawl among documents. Clara's face fell. "Oh, dear," she said, "I know you hate a mess. I made Harold do it. I thought it would be fun to work up here; where there's a fire."
    "Bless you, darling; it was a very sweet idea. You shouldn't be working at all…oh, God!"
    He sprang forward. Martin, tantalized beyond endurance by the crackling of a stiff glazed bit of notepaper, was chewing a corner of it and fighting the rest of the sheet with his hind legs. Gamadge fell upon him, pried open his jaws, and saved all but the fragment which Martin, with closed eyes and much jerking of the head, was hastily swallowing.
    "This is too bad!" Gamadge inspected damp remains. "The Honourable Mrs. Norton's shopping-list. One red velvet smoking-cap, 30 shillings . That was Lord Melbourne's Christmas present, I know it was, and I was going to write an article proving something or other. Damn it all."
    Clara got to her feet. "Oh, I'm so sorry."
    Harold was scrabbling papers together and stuffing them