I called a hansom directly I left the office and drove to Albemarle Street. A small group was watching the house from the other side of the road. The windows were boarded up and the stonework round them blackened with smoke. I knocked at the door, and it was opened by Ughtred Gascoyne’s servant. He had reason to remember me with gratitude, for I knew that servants are the adventurer’s staunchest allies or greatest enemies. “Will you step inside, sir? Lord Gascoyne has been here most of the day. He’s just gone.” I did not wish to meet his lordship. “When do you expect him to return?” “Not till to-morrow, sir.” I went in. There was a gruesome smell of charred wood and stuffs. I followed Mason upstairs. “This it where it must have begun, sir.” He pointed to where the wicker work chair had stood. “What I can’t understand, sir, is how the shutters came to be closed. I never knew Mr. Gascoyne to shut them, and he gave me particular instructions to the contrary. There was no need for them, you see.” I looked towards the bedroom. “They took him away to the mortuary, sir, to await the inquest. No man could have been a better master.” “He was a splendid chap, Mason. You know how I looked up to him.” I spoke in my most ingenuous tones. “And very fond he was of you, sir. He was always at home to you.” I pressed half a sovereign into his hand. “Did he come home alone, Mason?” “No, sir—at least, I fancy I heard voices. Oh yes, and I heard the door bang. I don’t know who it was, sir, I’m sure.” The front room was quite burnt out, and there could be absolutely no trace of the oil with which I had started the conflagration. I had apparently succeeded in a very risky undertaking. I left a card at Mrs. Goodsall’s with my deepest sympathy. The servant informed me she was quite prostrated, and I was made somewhat uncomfortable by hearing sounds of sobbing from the second storey of the tiny house. At the Gascoynes’, where I was to dine, I found the household in the deepest gloom. The tragedy seemed to have brought back something of the bitterness of their own grief. It was too similar in its horror to the death of the two young Gascoynes to be much discussed. We avoided gloomy topics with an almost hysterical earnestness, but it is extraordinary how matters of that kind will obtrude themselves when they are desired not to do so. Left alone with Mr. Gascoyne, however, the constraint passed and we talked freely. “Just one of those things that are quite inexplicable. The fire brigade authorities do not agree with the theory that a live coal must have dropped out of the grate. They think the fire originated at the other end of the room, and that it must have been a cigarette or something of the kind.” “It doesn’t matter much what it was, does it?” “Of course not; only one cannot help travelling round a case like that and looking at it from every point of view. I called there this afternoon.” “And I was there this evening.”