She peered at Peter in the reflection from the policeman’s light; he saw a bloated red face, a loose mouth, and eyes of singular smallness. She was short and stout and wore a red flannel dressing gown, though apparently she had not disrobed for the night. “I can’t take you unless you’ve got money,” she said. “I’ve been done before.” Peter skinned a pound from the roll and showed it to her. “All right, come in,” she said ungraciously. Stopping only to thank the policeman for his help, Peter followed her into the narrow, evil-smelling passage, and the door closed behind him. Fate had played its supreme joke on Peter Dawlish when it had led him to the unsavoury home of Mrs. Inglethorne. She struck a match, lit a smelly little oil lamp, and preceded him up a steep, short flight of stairs to the floor above. “Here’s the room,” she said, and he followed her into the front and the best bedroom in the house. To his surprise, it was fairly well furnished: the bed was a new one, the walls had been lately papered; the two cheap engravings which constituted the pictorial embellishment of the apartment were in good taste. “This was my lodger’s room. He furnished it himself,” said Mrs. Inglethorne rapidly. “As nice a man as ever drew the breath of life.” She pronounced the last sentence so quickly that it almost seemed to be one word. “Has he left you?” She glanced at him suspiciously as though she thought that he was already informed as to the lodger’s fate. “He’s got five years for busting a house up at Blackheath. My old man got seven, and an honester man there never was!” A grim jest this, thought Peter Dawlish, that he, newly from that drab and drear establishment on Dartmoor, should be offered the vacant bedroom of one who had taken his place, was probably in the very cell in B Ward he had occupied. “Pay in advance; eight shillings. I’ll give you the change to-morrow.” Mrs. Inglethorne held out her hand. In the light of the lamp she was even more unprepossessing than Peter had thought. He gathered from certain evidence that prohibition would find no vigorous supporter in her. She took the money he gave her, and, setting down the lamp, opened a chest and extracted two new sheets. Evidently, thought Peter, as he watched the process of bed making, the burglar lodger was fastidious in the matter of comfort: the sheets were of linen. He discovered later that the pillows were of down, and that the bed itself was a luxurious article purchased at great cost in Tottenham Court Road. “He liked everything of the best,” said Mrs. Inglethorne, pausing in her labours to extol the absent tenant. She went out soon after, leaving behind her a faint odour of spirituous liquor. He undressed slowly by the light of the lamp, preparing for the first good night’s sleep he had had in a week.