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dropped while she was asleep. The thief hadn't noticed them!
    Most of them were blank, but on one there were a few lines of writing, continued from a previous sheet, which said:
    ...a place of darkness, under a knotted rope. Three red lights shine on the spot when the moon pulls on the water. Take it. It is clearly yours by my gift, and by the laws of Enghnd. Antequam haec legis, mortuus ero; utinam ex animo hominum tarn celeriter memoria mea discedat.

    Sally, who knew no Latin, folded the paper and put it in her bag; and then, sick with disappointment, set out for Mrs. Rees's.
    Meanwhile, in Wapping, a sinister little ceremony was taking place.
    Once a day, on Mrs. Holland's orders, Adelaide took up a bowl of soup to the gentleman on the second floor. Mrs. Holland had discovered Matthew Bedwell's craving very early, and, never slow to take up an opportunity, found her venomous old curiosity powerfully aroused.
    For her guest had fragments of a very interesting story to tell. He was delirious, alternately sweating with pain and raving at the visions which crowded in from the dirty walls. Mrs. Holland listened patiently, supplied a little of the drug, listened again, and provided more opium in exchange for details about the things he said in his madness. Little by little the story emerged—and Mrs. Holland realized that she was sitting on a fortune.
    Bedwell's tale concerned the affairs of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents. Mrs. Holland's ears pricked up when they heard the name Lockhart: she had her own interest in that family, and the coincidence astonished her. But as the tale came out, she realized that this was a new angle altogether: the loss of the schooner Lavinia, the death of the owner, the firm's unusually high profits from their China trade, and a hundred and one things besides. Mrs. Holland, though not a superstitious woman, blessed the hand of Providence.
    As for Bedwell, he was too helpless to move. Mrs. Holland was not quite sure that she had extracted all the knowledge that lay fuming in his brain—which was why she kept him alive, if he could be said to be living. As soon

    as she decided that the back bedroom was needed for some other purpose, Death and Bedwell, who had missed each other in the South China Sea, could finally keep their rendezvous in the Thames. An appropriate address. Hangman's Wharf.
    So now Adelaide, having ladled a quantity of warm, greasy soup into a bowl, clumsily hacked a slice of bread to go with it and climbed the stairs to the back bedroom. There was silence from inside; she hoped he was asleep. She unlocked the door and held her breath, loathing the stale, heavy air and the damp chill that struck her as she entered.
    The gentleman was lying on the mattress with a rough blanket up to his chest, but he was not asleep. His eyes followed her as she put the bowl down on a nearby chair.
    "Adelaide," he whispered.
    "Yessir?"
    "What you got there?"
    "Soup, sir. Mrs. Holland says you got to eat it up 'cause it'll do you good."
    "You got a pipe for me.-^"
    "After the soup, sir."
    She did not look at him; they both spoke in whispers. He raised himself on one elbow and then struggled painfully upright, and she stood back against the wall as if she had no substance at all—as if she were a shadow. Only her huge eyes seemed alive.
    "Give us it here," he said.
    She took him the bowl and crumbled the bread into it for him, and then went to the far wall as he ate. But he had no appetite; after a couple of spoonfuls he pushed it away.

    "Don't want it," he said. "There's no goodness in it. Where's the pipe?"
    "You got to eat it, sir, 'cause Mrs. Holland'll kill me else," said Adelaide. "Please . . ."
    "You eat it. You could do with a feed," he said. "Come on, Adelaide. The pipe, girl."
    Reluctantly she opened the cupboard which, with the chair and the bed, was the only furniture the room possessed, and took out a long, heavy pipe, jointed in three sections. He watched intently as she fitted it