and not only Grant's house, but this house as well. Then came the question, Why was he watching this house? I knew from Parker that the Dumpling had planned to kidnap certain millionaires, and to hold them to ransom. Hearing on inquiry that your brother was a millionaire, I thought it not unlikely that it was he who was to have been kidnapped last night. I think so still, but I am inclined to believe that my appearance at the opium den upset the calculations of the conspirators, and so prevented them from carrying out their plans. They are still watching this house, however. Why? Because they are waiting for your brother's return so that they may learn his movements, and lay their plans accordingly. "Then came the murder of young Grant. It may have been, or it may not have been, the work of the Dumpling and his accomplices. Personally, I haven't a moment's doubt that it was so. While all the neighbourhood is hunting for the murderer, a man tries to remove a pane of glass in your conservatory. Who is this man? Is he a burglar who, with no connection whatever with the murder, has chanced to choose this particular night to break into your house? I don't think so. He could hardly have failed to hear that a murder had just been committed in your immediate neighbourhood, and if so, would he be fool enough to select the very night when he knows the police will be wide awake and on the watch? Not likely. If he had been an ordinary burglar, he would have had his diamond with him, and would have cut out, not broken, that pane of glass. The man who broke the glass was a fugitive, and in desperate straits. "Possibly he thought that at this hour of the night no one would be likely to come into the conservatory, and that he could lie in hiding till the hue and cry had passed. Possibly he hoped to slip through the house unobserved, and so make his way into the street from the front, in order to disarm suspicion. A man who had just committed a murder was not likely to walk boldly out of the front door of such a house as this.