"When do you suppose," Lord Ballina said, in a shaking voice--"when do you suppose that we shall know if anything has happened, Andrew? Have you made arrangements with your--er--er--friends to report to you about it?" "I'm not mad!" Levison answered shortly. "Hear! Why, if there's anything to hear you'll hear soon enough----What's that?" He had started violently, and the perspiration was beginning to run down his face. A distant rumble of thunder breaking suddenly in upon the quiet of the room had startled him and betrayed more than anything else in what a state his nerves were. "It's only thunder," Mimi replied. "Good Heavens, Andrew, you are enough to give one the jumps yourself! But if we're to know, how shall we know?" "Why, it's very simple," Levison answered. "Don't you see that if anything has--er--happened, it'll be in the evening papers and in the streets within three-quarters of an hour from the time it's occurred. There will be journalists with this man Joseph, of course, there always are wherever he goes. Well, the papers will be up here by the motors in half-an-hour after they're issued, and we shall hear the newsboys shouting it out all over the place." "There's an old man who sells papers at the corner of Florence Street, only a few yards away," Mimi Addington broke in quickly. "The boys on the bicycles come up and supply him with all the new editions as they come out. I often hear them shouting." "Then all we've got to do," said Andrew Levison, "is to wait until we hear that shouting." They sat waiting--three murderers--and as they sat there a presence stole into the room, unseen, but very real. The grisly phantom Fear was among them. Waiting! CHAPTER XXII THE HOUSE DESOLATE The echo of the shot which had struck down Sir Augustus Kirwan had hardly died away when two of the police inspectors, accompanied by Eric Black, rushed into one of the open doorways of the court. Their feet could be heard thundering up the rickety, wooden stairs of the old house, as Joseph and Sir Thomas Ducaine knelt, horror-struck, by the side of the dead man, while the others crowded round in uncontrollable dismay. Joseph himself seemed absolutely stunned for a moment. And it was Sir Thomas's firm and capable hands which were moving rapidly over Sir Augustus' chest, endeavoring to test the movement of the heart. The young Duke of Dover was talking rapidly and in an undertone with the police inspector, and pointing upwards to the black, unglazed window-hole from which the smoke of the shot was still eddying out. The whole series of events had occurred in a mere flash of time, with an astonishing swiftness which seemed to outstrip or to numb the lightning operations of thought itself.