Having paid the absent tenants these delicate attentions, he left a few more souvenirs of his visit and then hurried downstairs, and, pulling the front door gently to, walked rapidly away. A quarter of an hour later, when Miss Duck returned and let herself in with the latchkey, the house was empty. Miss Georgina had purchased a bargain at the linendraper’s, and, Mrs. Smith being an authority on bargains, Georgina ran upstairs to display her purchase and ask Mrs. Smith’s opinion. She knocked at the door, and, receiving no answer, opened it, and stepped in. The rooms were empty. ‘Dear me!’ said Miss Georgina; ‘how strange! She never said anything about going out.’ The afternoon wore away, and Mrs. Smith did not return. Evening came and brought Jabez home to his tea, but it brought no Mrs. Smith, and, stranger still, it brought no Mr. Smith either. ‘Whatever can have become of the Smiths, Jabez?’ said Miss Georgina, when tea was cleared away, and the first floor was still empty. ‘I don’t know, my dear,’ answered Mr. Dick. ‘Perhaps they’ve bolted with the lead off the roof, or the washing out of the back garden.’ ‘Don’t be a fool, Jabez. Can’t you talk seriously for a moment?’ ‘What a fidget you are, Georgina! Let the Smiths alone, and they’ll come home, and bring their tails behind them.’ ‘Keep your poetry for those who appreciate it,’ exclaimed Miss Georgina, tossing her head. ‘All I know is, if the Smiths don’t come home soon I shall think something’s wrong.’ There was something wrong indeed—how wrong, Miss Duck discovered later on, when a detective arrived from Scotland Yard ‘in consequence of information received, ’and in Miss Dick’s presence searched the rooms and found quite enough to prove that the late occupants were professional forgers and in league with a gang of robbers. Miss Duck rushed off there and then and brought in Miss Jackson to stay with her till Jabez returned, declaring that she wasn’t going to be murdered in her bed for anyone, and picturing in vivid colours what might have happened to a poor unprotected female left alone as she often had been with these monsters of iniquity. At the idea of her friend being murdered in her bed, Miss Jackson raised a dismal howl, and wept on Georgina’s bosom to such an extent that the latter must have been in imminent danger of rheumatics in the chest. ‘I always said they were no good,’ hissed Miss Dick, as she counted the cheap electro spoons and forks. ‘If Jabez had been a man he wouldn’t have allowed me to be mixed up with a pack of thieves. Why didn’t he let his apartments himself? I’ll never take another lodger as long as I live.’ ‘I wouldn’t, dear,’ said Miss Jackson; ‘it isn’t genteel.’