light has not been used since the index was taken, should read at 1521.
What do you make of the card?"

"1532," David cried. "Which means eleven units since the meter was last
taken. Or, if you like to put it from your point of view, eleven units
used the night that I came here. You are quite right, Bell. You have
practically convinced me that I have been inside the real 219 for the
first time to-day. And yet the more one probes the mystery the more
astounding does it become.... What do you propose to do next?"

"Find out the name of the last tenant or owner." Bell suggested.
"Discover what the two houses were used for when they were occupied by
one person. Also ascertain why on earth the owners are willing to let a
house this size and in this situation for a sum like L80 per annum. Let
us go and take the keys back to the agents."

Steel was nothing loth to find himself in the fresh air again. Some
progress had been made like the opening of a chess-match between masters,
and yet the more Steel thought of it the more muddled and bewildered did
he become. No complicated tangle in the way of a plot had ever been
anything like the skein this was.

"I'm like a child in your hands," he said. "I'm a blind man on the end of
a string; a man dazed with wine in a labyrinth. And if ever I help a
woman again--"

He paused as he caught sight of Ruth Gates's lovely face through the
window of No. 219. Her features were tinged with melancholy; there was a
look of deepest sympathy and feeling and compassion in her glorious
eyes. She slipped back as Steel bowed, and the rest of his speech was