A fire in any crowded district of London at whatever hour always attracts a large number of onlookers. That night was no exception, for a big crowd had assembled at either end of the street, and in the centre of the crowd towards Hammersmith Bridge, wedged between several women of the lower class, stood a shabbily-dressed man in a golf cap watching intently the progress of the fire. He watched it with satisfaction, and saw the flames as they descended and burst through the windows of the second floor. When the roof fell in he smiled, though none noticed it. The man saw that all evidence of his diabolical work had been destroyed, for he was none other than Bernard Boyne. What had happened to Marigold and her aunt? He asked the woman standing next to him if any people were in the house. "Yes. They say there’s two women and a man there," was the reply. "The man got out, but the two women ’ave been burnt to death, poor dears! Ain’t it terrible? They were asleep when the fire broke out. The firemen ’aven’t got the bodies out yet." "Terrible!" declared the man in the golf cap; and then he elbowed his way out of the crowd filled with satisfaction. As he did so a youth shouted: "Lucky for ’em—eh? Both the women got out just in time." "Is that so?" asked Boyne. "Yes," said the youth. "One of the firemen ’as just told me." "There was a girl there, wasn’t there?" Boyne queried. "Yes; she was got out, with an old woman!" "Where are they?" "They say they’re in a house just along there," was the reply. Boyne held his breath and went on. At first he had believed that his dastardly plot had been successful, and that Marigold had fallen a victim to his clever machinations. At least, the two upper floors had been destroyed and certain evidence wiped out. The clock, the pocket-lighter, and the child’s rubber airball filled with petrol, which had been in the box he had so silently introduced into the house while Marigold was at the police-station, had done their work just as he had intended. But he was filled with disappointment and chagrin when, after several other inquiries of firemen and others, he became convinced that old Mrs. Felmore and her niece had escaped. At last, after watching until the excitement of the scene had died down and the crowd was dispersing, he learnt from one of the firemen—he dared not be seen by a police constable, for most of them knew him by sight—the house in which the two half-suffocated women had taken shelter. Then he turned and trudged all the way back to Pont Street, for, dressed as he was, he did not wish to get there until the servants had retired. He had made another great coup, it was true, but the peril of Marigold still existed. That was the one thought that obsessed him as he strode up the long Kensington Road, past the Albert Hall, and on towards Hyde Park Corner.