happened, he reached the broad, first landing in safety, and he was
about to go on up to his attic when he beard a door at the end of
the passage open and saw Ella appear in her dressing-gown.

"What is the matter?" she asked, in a low voice.

"It's all right," he answered. "There was a noise in the garden,
and I came down to see what it was, but it's only cats."

"Oh, is that all?" she said distrustfully.

"Yes," he answered, in a lower voice still, he said:

"Will you tell me something? Do you know any one who talks in a
very peculiar shrill high voice?"

She did not answer, and, after a moment's hesitation, went back
into her room and closed the door behind her.

He went on up to his attic with the feeling that she could have
answered if she had wished to, and lay down in a troubled and
dispirited mood.

For he was sure now that Ella mistrusted him and would give him
no assistance, and that weighed upon him greatly, as did also his
conviction that what it behoved him above all else to know--the
identity of the man who, in this affair, stood behind Deede Dawson
and made use of his fierce and fatal energies--he had had it in
his power to discover and had failed to make use of the opportunity.