They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she declared she never could. “But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a young girl like you alone in the day of battle, murder and sudden death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay here. Have you no other relatives in London?” “None anywhere that I know much about.” “That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.” He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and leave the deserted house in some semblance of order.