"I will telephone to St. George's," I said, a little later, "and ask for the latest news. You'd better not go to see him until the house-physician gives you leave. He asked me to tell you that." The reply was satisfactory. Sir Charles was not in pain, the hall-porter said. He was slightly feverish. That was all. What grim consolation! Two eager days passed. Still Lady Thorold showed no sign of life. I had telephoned to Messrs. Spink and Peters. Also I had telegraphed to Houghton Park, as it was said Lady Thorold intended to return there. But to no purpose. One thing that surprised me was that Whichelo had not been to the hospital. Where was he during these days? Had he, too, not heard of the calamity? "You have not heard the exciting news," I said to Faulkner, when I met him outside the Devonshire on the way to his club. "What exciting news?" he inquired, in his cool phlegmatic way. "You get excited so easily, Dick, if you will forgive my saying so." He listened with interest to the news, and when I had done talking, he said quite calmly-- "Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten minutes ago." "Saw them!" I gasped. "Where?" "In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here. They turned up Dover Street, and went down in the tube lift." "Are you positive?" "Quite. I couldn't well forget them. They were walking together, laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss. I admire that kind of nerve." Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold's house in Belgrave Street. The hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises. It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor. What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy's age. Experts put their heads together, and put on their spectacles. Some were of the opinion that it must be centuries old. Sir Charles, the one man who might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be questioned. Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from his _confreres_. A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in Belgrave Street had been dead "less than twenty years." Further, he pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico. He believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican. The news of Sir Charles' condition was more satisfactory that evening, inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he was still no worse. Perhaps, after all, Dr. Agnew had been mistaken. Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my darling's.