The police-sergeant had got off his bicycle at the same time that I
jumped from mine, and he was close behind me when Maisie and I met, and I
heard him give a sharp whistle at her news. And as for me, I was
dumbfounded, for though I had seen well enough that Mr. Gilverthwaite was
very ill when I left him, I was certainly a long way from thinking him
like to die. Indeed, I was so astonished that all I could do was to stand
staring at Maisie in the grey light which was just coming between the
midnight and the morning. But the sergeant found his tongue more readily.

"I suppose he died in his bed, miss?" he asked softly. "Mr. Hugh here
said he was ill; it would be a turn for the worse, no doubt, after Mr.
Hugh left him?"

"He died suddenly just after eleven o'clock," answered Maisie; "and your
mother sought you at Mr. Lindsey's office, Hugh, and when she found you
weren't there, she came down to our house, and I had to tell her that
you'd come out this way on an errand for Mr. Gilverthwaite. And I told
her, too, what I wasn't so sure of myself, that there'd no harm come to
you of it, and that you'd be back soon after twelve, and I went down to
your house and waited with her; and when you didn't come, and didn't
come, why, I got Tom here to get our bicycles out and we came to seek
you. And let's be getting back, for your mother's anxious about you, and
the man's death has upset her--he went all at once, she said, while she
was with him."

We all got on our bicycles again and set off homewards, and Chisholm
wheeled alongside me and we dropped behind a little.

"This is a strange affair," said he, in a low voice; "and it's like to be
made stranger by this man's sudden death. I'd been looking to him to get