"Perhaps I _have_ jumped to conclusions somewhat," I said. "But if someone is really watching the house again, I ought to be at work, not wasting any more of your time and my time by gossiping here--especially as it turns out after all that Mr. Carleton is safe. If there is any back door I could slip out by, I think I'll either follow the shadower myself, and see if I can't find out where he comes from, or perhaps even try to get New Scotland Yard to arrest him on suspicion. He's the only clue I've got to the whereabouts of the Dumpling, and it won't do for me to lose sight of him. What's that noise, I wonder, in the street? There's something amiss, clearly. It won't do for me to be seen leaving the house. Would you mind letting your servant inquire?" "Certainly, if you wish it," she said, ringing the bell. "Metcalfe, just find out what that disturbance in the street is," she said, when the man appeared, "and come back to report to me." "I have been out to see already, m'm," Metcalfe answered respectfully. "A man's been stabbed--killed, too. They say he's a brother of Mr. Grant the detective, who lives at No. 10, Taunton Place, and very like him, and that a man who has been hanging about the street all day stabbed him just as he was coming out of No. 10. Why he did it nobody knows, unless the murderer's a criminal that Mr. Grant was after, and stabbed the brother, thinking it was the detective himself. And the worst of it is he's got away, too! But what's that?" From the back of the house there came a sound that was suspiciously like the stealthy breaking of glass. It so happens that I have extraordinary sharp hearing, and was able with some exactness to locate the direction whence the sound came. Calling out "Follow me, Metcalfe!" I dashed down the stairs and through a door which led to a corridor, at the end of which was a conservatory. A cold wind indicated either an open door or window--perhaps a broken window. As I raced along the corridor--the bewildered Metcalfe so far behind me that I could hear his heavy steps descending the stairs--I saw that though all the other plants in the conservatory were perfectly still, one white-blossomed flower in a pot was swaying and moving as if in a draught, and the next moment there peered, through a broken pane of glass behind it, the white and wicked face of the Dumpling. CHAPTER XIV. MISS CLARA "SAVES MY LIFE."