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Rh "I'll go and look for him myself," the latter remarked, but Odell stopped him.

"I should prefer to do that, Mr. Titheredge. Will you instead go to the servants' quarters and see if any more of them have decamped?" He turned again to the couch. "Mr. Lorne, which is Mr. Chalmers's room?"

"The one on the left, third floor, rear," panted the sick man. "Julian's was the room just in front of it."

"Do they connect?" The attorney had already gone on his errand, and Odell paused in the doorway.

"Yes, by the bath and dressing-rooms between."

The detective glanced into the drawing- and dining-rooms and then mounted the main staircase, avoiding the broken top step. He was proceeding along the hall to the second flight leading to the third floor when from one of the rooms behind him a burst of laughter came; impish, sarcastic laughter utterly lacking in mirth.

It seemed such a strange, incongruous thing in the silence of that house that Odell paused; and then in a thin, high, whining voice came the words:

"The police? That would be like old Sam, wouldn't it? As well send a village fire-company to put out Vesuvius, We'll go, one after the other; you'll see!"

From whose lips could that voice have issued? Odell recalled the two members of the family whom he had not as yet encountered; the oldest daughter and the youngest son. The hunchback. It must be he. Odell waited.

There came a low murmur in an unmistakable feminine tone, and then the high querulous one again.

"My dear aunt, where is the disgrace to the family in