The sergeant, who had been regularly taken aback, recovered himself at this. "Come, sir," he cried; "I like that. You come to us and say your friend's missing, and you think that he is lying dead in his chambers. `All right,' we say--" "Wrong," cried Guest with a laugh, which sounded strange and forced. "So it is, sir--wrong," said the sergeant. "We come and do our duty, and I follow up the scent as clear as clear, right up to this spot; and I put it to you gents, as gentlemen, oughtn't your friend to have been murdered and a-lying there?" "Well," said Guest, with another forced laugh, as he glanced uneasily at Stratton; "it did look suspicious, and you worked it all up so theatrically that I was a little impressed." "Theatrical! Impressed, sir! Why, it was all as real to me; and I say again your friend ought to be lying there. What do you say, Jem?" "Cert'nly." "But he is not," said Guest sharply; "and it has all been a false alarm, you see, and I'm very, very glad." "Course you are, sir, and so are we," said Jem huskily. "Don't 'pologise. Don't make a bit o' diffrens to us. We're paid all the same." "Of course," cried Guest, keeping up the position of leader, for Stratton stood gazing down into the bath like one in a dream. "There, sergeant, we are very much obliged, and it's all right; so your man had better screw down the bath lid again." "But it isn't all right, sir," said the sergeant testily, and he gave his ear a scratch. "I don't like giving up just for a check." Guest shivered. "I've got as far as here, and I put it to you; the gentleman ought to have been in that thing, and he isn't." "That's plain enough," said Guest hurriedly. "Then where is he?" "In the country, I suppose, collecting." "That's your opinion, sir. P'r'aps your friend'll speak. What do you say, sir?" "Nothing," said Stratton, with an effort. "There is nothing to say," said Guest sharply. "Queer for this place to have all been screwed up--both, the door and the bath." "Oh, no; I see why," said Guest quickly. "Bad smells, perhaps, from the waste pipe--sewer gas." "Don't smell like bad gas," said Jem, sniffing about and ending by dipping a finger in the bath, and holding it to his nose, after which he gave a peculiar grunt. "Well?" "Sperrits." "Nonsense, man!" cried Guest. "What! That?" "That's sperrits, sure enough, sir," said the man, dipping his finger in the bath again. "Open that there lantern, pardner." The sergeant obeyed, and his companion thrust in his finger, for it to be enveloped directly with a bluish flame. "Mind what you're doing," said the sergeant hastily, "or we shall have the whole place a-fire." "All right, pardner. Sperrits it is, and, I should say, come in them cans." He gave one of the great tins a tap with his toe, and it sent forth a dull, metallic sound. "Very likely," said Guest. "Our friend is a naturalist, and uses spirits to preserve things in."