"Ossington?" The officer screwed his mouth up into the comical twist which it seemed he had a trick of giving it. "I believe it was, or, at any rate, something like it. A queer lot they were--very." "Do you see what's written as a heading on that piece of paper?" The officer's glance returned to the writing. "'Tom Ossington's Ghost!'--yes, I noticed it, but I don't know what it means--do you?" "Except that if the name of the people who lived here last was Ossington, it would seem as if last night's affair had some reference to the house's former occupants." "Yes--it would look as if it had--when you come to look at it in that way." He was studying it as if now he had made up his mind to understand it clearly. "It looks as if it was some sort of cryptogram, and yet it mightn't be--it's hard to tell." He wagged his head. "I'll take it to our chaps, and see what they can make of it. Some men are better at this sort of thing than others." Folding up the paper he placed it in his pocket-book. "Am I to understand that you can give no description of the burglar--that there's no one you suspect?" "I don't know that it amounts to suspicion--but there was a man hanging about here in rather a singular fashion whom I can't help thinking might have had a finger in the pie." "Can you describe him?" "He was about my height--I'm five feet six and a half--thick set, and I noticed he walked in a sort of rolling way; I thought he was drunk at first, but I don't believe he was. He kept his hands in his trousers pockets, and he was very shabbily dressed, in an old black coat--I believe you call them Chesterfields--which was buttoned down the front right up to the chin--I doubt if he had a waistcoat; a pair of old patched trousers--and I'm under the impression that his boots were odd ones. He had an old black billycock hat, with no band on, crammed over his eyes, iron-grey hair, and a fortnight's growth of whiskers on his cheeks and chin. He had a half impudent, half hang-dog air--altogether just the sort of person to try his hand at this sort of thing." "I'll take down that description, if you'll repeat it." She did repeat it--and he did take it down, with irritating slowness. When she had finished he read what he had written, tapping his teeth with the end of his pencil and looking most important. "I shouldn't be surprised if you've laid your finger on the very man--and if we lay our fingers on him before the day is over. You will excuse my saying, miss, that you've got the faculty of observation--marked. I couldn't have given a better description of a chap myself--and I've been a bit longer at the game than you have. Now I'll just go through the place once more, and then I'll go; and then in due course you'll hear from us again." He did go through the place once more--and he did go.