'Your brother is a very elegant-looking man,' Mrs. Tracy said to her
husband as she was preparing to retire. 'Quite like a foreigner, but how
bright his eyes are, and they look at you sometimes as if they would
see through you and know what you were thinking. They almost make me
afraid of him.'

Frank made no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear
which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was
very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep
when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed to him, to
waken the dead. Starting up he demanded who was there and what was
wanted.

'It is I,' Arthur said. 'I thought I smelled gas, and I have been
hunting round for it. There is nothing worse to breathe than gas,
whether from the furnace, the pipes, or the drain. I hope that is all
right.'

'Yes,' Frank answered, a little crossly. 'Had a new one put in two weeks
ago.'

'If there's gas in the main sewer it will come up just the same, and I
am sure I smell it,' Arthur said. 'I think I shall have all the
waste-pipes which connect with the drain cut off. Good-night. Am sorry I
disturbed you.'

They heard him as he went across the hall to his room, and Frank was
settling down again to sleep when there came a second knock, and Arthur
said, in a whisper: