"Oh, this isn't a Sunday school. If you hem and haw at me I shall show you the short cut to the front door. It was a fair business arrangement; so don't you think anything else. The man was named Strauss, and whether his motive in putting me there was quite square or not, don't let him suppose that I am going to screen him, for I'm not. I am straight with those that are straight with me; but those that are up to mean tricks, let them beware of the color of my hair--" "So you were put into the flat!" "Didn't I go into it rent-free? Stop, I will tell you, and you shall judge for yourself whether I have been shabbily used or not. One night last August I was introduced by a friend to a gentleman named Strauss--dark, pale man, pretty fetching, but not my style. However, next day he turned up at my place--I was living then in Great Titchfield-St.; and what do you think my man wanted? To put me into the Eddystone Mansions flat for six months at his expense, on the condition that I or Jenny would devote some time every day to searching for papers among the furniture. He said that a chum of his had once occupied the flat, and had left in it one or more documents, carefully hidden somewhere, which were of the utmost importance; I was to search for these, and give them to him. Well, I didn't half like it, for I thought he was wicked. So I asked him why he didn't take the flat, and search for the papers himself at his leisure? Well, he made some excuse or other, and at last, as he talked sanely enough, I struck hands over it--rent free, six months, an hour's search each day; and Jenny and I moved in." "Did you search an hour each day?" asked David with a laugh. "Hardly likely!" grinned Miss Ermyn L'Estrange. "I can see myself searching a small flat day after day for I didn't know what, like a goose. There was nowhere to search. I did look about a little the first day; but, not finding any documents, I thought to myself, 'Here endeth.' Of course, I had to tell him that I was busy searching, for that man pestered me so, you wouldn't believe. He never actually came to the flat, for some reason or other; but night after night, when the theaters opened in September, there he was, wanting to know if I had found anything, if I had probed the cushions with hat-pins, if I had looked under the carpets, and the rest of it. At last I began to treat him a bit off-handedly, I admit, and before the third month was up, he says to me one night that if I didn't find something at once, he would have to cut off the allowance for the rent. I told him that he had put me there for six months, that I had made all arrangements, and that he was an idiot. If he didn't know his mind, I knew mine. Oh, we had a fine set-to, I can tell you. He said that, since I had proved useless to him, I should have to pay my own rent, so, what with ghosts and all, I wouldn't stay in the place another two days; and in going I gave it hot to that Mr. Dibbin, too--"