time away, too. He was a great traveller, and filled the house with
stuff he brought home from all over the world. The laundry--a small
detached building beyond the servants' quarters--he turned into a
regular little museum. The curios and things I have cleared away--they
collected dust and were always getting broken--but the laundry-house you
shall see tomorrow."

Colonel Wragge spoke with such deliberation and with so many pauses that
this beginning took him a long time. But at this point he came to a full
stop altogether. Evidently there was something he wished to say that
cost him considerable effort. At length he looked up steadily into my
companion's face.

"May I ask you--that is, if you won't think it strange," he said, and a
sort of hush came over his voice and manner, "whether you have noticed
anything at all unusual--anything queer, since you came into the house?"

Dr. Silence answered without a moment's hesitation.

"I have," he said. "There is a curious sensation of heat in the place."

"Ah!" exclaimed the other, with a slight start. "You _have_ noticed it.
This unaccountable heat--"

"But its cause, I gather, is not in the house itself--but outside," I
was astonished to hear the doctor add.

Colonel Wragge rose from his chair and turned to unhook a framed map
that hung upon the wall. I got the impression that the movement was made
with the deliberate purpose of concealing his face.