Here Carstairs, after looking to see that there were towels on the rack and soap in the dish, left them and went below. Presently they could hear his voice and Emmy Costivan's blent in half-subdued laughter. Cleek, leaving the door partly open and signalling to Narkom to place himself so that he could see if anybody started to come upstairs, went to the open window, looked out across the neglected garden to the belt of woodland beyond it and, putting up his hand, tilted his hat to one side and began reflectively to scratch his head. Immediately, a bare branch moved above the level of a thick clump of wild elder bushes just by the broken paling which marked the rear boundary of the garden. It remained stationary for an instant, and then dropped out of sight again. "All right, Narkom, they are there!" he said in a swift whisper. "Sit tight a minute and don't speak." Then he slopped a quantity of water out of the jug into the wash-basin, plunged his hands into it, then rubbed them along the window-sill. After which he partially rinsed them and then dried them off on first one towel and then the other--all the while moving up and down the floor and whistling contentedly. "All right," he announced, presently. "Needn't do sentry duty any more. Leave the door wide open. I don't think our friend Carstairs will be quite such an idiot as to waste his time in sneaking up; but if he should the open door will be enough for him and, at the same time, give us a chance to see him. A bad egg, that gentleman. He is pretty deeply involved in this little business unless I miss my guess." "I thought you suspected him of something when you crossed over to that wild rose bush." "What! Am I dropping into the habit of giving signs, then?" exclaimed Cleek. "I wonder if our friend the vicar noticed, too? I caught his eye fixed upon me more than once." "The vicar! Good heavens, man, you don't mean that you suspect----?" "Ch't! Not so loud, or I shall wish I had made you a dumb man as well as a deaf one. Sh-h! Nothing now--your time is coming. We have dawdled to the end of the dawdling period, and come to the active one. You shall have speech and excitement enough the minute the darkness falls." "You have an idea, then?" murmured Mr. Narkom. "You have really picked up a clue?" "I have picked up many. They may be good and they may be bad, I can decide only when St. Saviour's bells start ringing to-night." "You have a clue to that, then?" "Not I. They will be the last on my list for investigation. At present I am principally concerned with the astonishing circumstance regarding the noise of that fellow Davis's death struggle." "But, man alive, he didn't make any." "Precisely. That's the astonishing circumstance to which I allude!" said Cleek. The queer one-sided smile travelled slowly up his cheek.