"You might explain to the constable on duty in the neighbourhood--if he comes to inquire, that is--the cause of the disturbance, and that Scotland Yard is in charge and Superintendent Narkom already on the premises. That's all, thank you. You may close the door and take your colleagues below. Hullo! our prisoner seems to be subsiding into something akin to gibbering idiocy, Mr. Trent. Fright has turned his brain, apparently. Let us make use of the respite from his shrieks. You will, of course, wish to hear how I got on the track of the man, and what were the clues which led up to the solving of the affair. Well, you shall. Sit down, and while we are waiting for the darkness to come I'll give you the complete explanation." CHAPTER XXXVIII Colliver, who had now sunk into a state of babbling incoherence, lay on his face in the wreck of the tableau, rolling his head from side to side and clasping and unclasping his manacled hands. Trent turned his back upon the unpleasant sight and, placing three chairs at the opposite end of the room, dropped into one and lifted an eager countenance to Cleek. "Tell me first of all," he asked, "how under heaven you came to suspect how the disappearance of the boy was managed? It seems like magic, to me. When in the world did you get the first clue to it, Mr. Cleek?" "Never until I heard of those two women looking into this room and seeing the vase of pink roses standing on a spindle-legged table in the centre of it," he replied. "You see, even in the old days when I had the other case in hand and was searching for a clue to Colliver's disappearance, never had any one mentioned the name of Loti to me. I knew, of course, that you made wax figures here, but I never heard until this afternoon that Loti was the man who was employed to model them. I also knew about the existence of the glass-room and its position, for I had been at the pains of inspecting it from the outside. That came about in this way: Just before Miss Larue closed up the case of James Colliver I had obtained the first actual clue to his movements after he left Mr. Trent, senior, and came out of the office. "That clue came from the door porter, Felix Murchison. What careful 'pumping' got out of him was that when James Colliver left the office he had asked him, Murchison, which was the way to the place where they made the waxworks, as he'd heard that they were making a head of Miss Larue to be used in the execution scene of Catharine Howard, and he'd like to have a look at it. Murchison said that he told him the figures were made in a glass-room on the top of the house, and directed him how to reach it. He went up the stairs, and that was the last that was seen of him.