It was not a dignified landing, but for the moment Leslie Maughan was less interested in her dignity than her safety. A crowd had already gathered, attracted by the unusual happening, and there appeared from nowhere an inspector of police, a resourceful man who, having heard the story, immediately stopped an omnibus and ordered the driver to bring his big machine onto the sidewalk immediately beneath the window. Standing on the rail of the bus, one of the policemen reached the window sill and climbed inside, and was followed by the inspector. There was no sound of the struggle which the morbid crowd expected. A few minutes later the door below was unbolted and Leslie and the trembling Lucretia went into the passage. They found the hall window on the first landing wide open. A police whistle buzzed in the street; in a very short time the block would be surrounded. “No, they haven’t cut the wire, as far as I can see,” said the inspector, examining the wall of the passage with his lamp. “Where do you keep your fuse box?” “I think it is near the door,” said the girl. It proved to be within easy reach. The flat had been darkened by the simple expedient of removing the fuses. They found them intact on the floor and replaced them, and an inspection was possible. Except for the broken door, no damage had been done to the flat. Whoever the intruders were, their time had been too short to conduct a search of the room. The drawers of the desk were untouched. “They hadn’t much time, had they?” said the puzzled inspector. “I can’t understand this job. If they were ordinary burglars they would have cleared just as soon as they knew you had spotted them.” Half an hour later, and before the police had departed, Mr. Coldwell came on the scene. By this time every roof and yard in the vicinity had been searched; night watchmen had been aroused from their surreptitious sleep, and a small army of police detectives had examined every window that might afford a possible means of escape. But no sign of the intruders was discovered. “I don’t like this,” said Leslie. Mr. Coldwell shook his head. “You’ll have to find other lodgings for a while. To-morrow you had better transfer your belongings and Lucretia to my house at Hampstead.” For five minutes he discussed in a low voice the theories he had formed, the plans he had made. “I don’t think it is necessary to leave a policeman in the house,” he said at last, and a little yellow man curled up on the top of the high bureau in Leslie’s room, screened from observation by the old-fashioned frieze of the wardrobe, was relieved. He heard the policemen go clattering down the stairs, and after a while: “Just phone me if you’re at all nervous, Leslie. Good-night.” Coldwell’s voice sounded from the hall; there was the slam of a door. The little yellow man, who spoke and understood English very well, did not smile to himself, because he was of a race that seldom smile.