The Witching Hill Estate Office was as new as the Queen Anne houses it had to let, and about as worthy of its name. It was just a wooden box with a veneer of rough-cast and a corrugated iron lid. Inside there was a vast of varnish on three of the walls; but the one opposite my counter consisted of plate-glass worth the rest of the structure put together. It afforded a fine prospect of Witching Hill Road, from the level crossing by the station to the second lamp-post round the curve. Framed and g

"You saw she had a fiver on the number? You may watch roulette many a long night without seeing that again!" It was Delavoye whispering as he dragged me away. He was the cool one now. Too excitable for me in the early stages of our adventure, he was not only the very man for all the rest, but a living lesson in just that thing or two I felt at first I could have taught him. For I fear I should have felled that butler if he had seen us in the cigar cellar, and I know I shouted when the magnum bur

Uvo Delavoye had developed a theory to match his name for the Estate. The baleful spirit of the notorious Lord Mulcaster still brooded over Witching Hill, and the innocent occupiers of the Queen Anne houses were one and all liable to the malign influence. Such was the modest proposition, put as fairly as can be expected of one who resisted it from the first; for both by temperament and training I was perhaps unusually proof against this kind of thing. But then I always held that Delavoye himself

It was grim to see how the corpse sat still and let us jump; but Uvo was himself before the knock was repeated. "You go, Gillon!" he said. "It's only somebody who's heard or seen us. Don't you think we smelt the gas through the letter-box, and wasn't it your duty——" The second knock cut him short, and I answered it without more ado. The night constable on the beat, who knew me well by sight, was standing on the doorstep like a man, his right hand on his hip till he had blinded me with his lanter

The Berridges of Berylstow—a house near my office in the Witching Hill Road—were perhaps the very worthiest family on the whole Estate. Old Mr. Berridge, by a lifetime of faithful service, had risen to a fine position in one of the oldest and most substantial assurance societies in the City of London. Mrs. Berridge, herself a woman of energetic character, devoted every minute that she could spare from household duties, punctiliously fulfilled, to the glorification of the local Vicar and the denu

"Thank goodness those lips and nostrils don't sprout on our branch!" Uvo had put up his eyebrows in a humorous way of his. "We must keep a weather eye open for the evil that they did living after them on Witching Hill! You may well stare at his hands; they probably weren't his at all, but done from a model. I hope the old Turk hadn't quite such a ladylike——" He stopped short, as I knew he would when he saw what I was pointing out to him; for I had not been staring at the effeminate hand affected

"Give it him back," I said. But Uvo set his teeth against us both, looking almost what he had just been called—looking abominably like that fine evil gentleman in Hampton Court—and I could stand the whole thing no longer. I rammed my own hand into Delavoye's pocket. And down and away out into the night, like a fiend let loose, went Guy Berridge and the ring with the peacock enamelled in white on a blood-red ground. I turned again to Delavoye. His shoulders were up to his ears in wry good humour.

Panting, I looked to see what had become of the small boy. He had taken to his heels as though the foul fiend were at them; his late pursuer was now his companion in flight, and I was thankful to find we had the scene to ourselves. Delavoye was pointing to the little thing that had tinkled as it fell, and as he pointed the blood dripped from his hand, and he shuddered like a man recovering from a fit. I had better admit plainly that the thing was that old ring with the white peacock set in red,

The Reverend Charles Brabazon, magnetic Vicar of the adjacent Village, had as strong a personality as one could wish to encounter in real life. He did what he liked with a congregation largely composed of the motley worldlings of Witching Hill. Small solicitors and west-end tradesmen, bank officials, outside brokers, first-class clerks in Government offices, they had not a Sunday soul to call their own, these hard-headed holders of season tickets to Waterloo. Throughout the summer they flocked t

Coplestone was the first of our tenants who had taken his house through me, and I was extremely proud of him. It was precisely the pride of the mighty hunter in his first kill; for Coplestone was big game in his way, and even of a leonine countenance, with his crested wave of tawny hair and his clear sunburnt skin. In early life, as an incomparable oar, he had made a name which still had a way of creeping into the sporting papers; and at forty the same fine figure and untarnished face were a wal

She heard me. She came to the door and stood in silhouette against the cheerful firelight of the inner room. Its glow just warmed one side of her white cap and plain apparel, then glanced off her high white forehead and made a tear twinkle underneath. "He thinks I'm his mother," she whispered—"and I'm letting him!" I went out and pulled myself together on the landing, before sneaking back into the study without waking Coplestone. In the morning I was dozing behind my counter without compunction,

It must have been in my second year of humble office that the burglary scare took possession of Witching Hill. It was certainly the burglars' month of November, and the fogs confirmed its worst traditions. On a night when the street lamps burst upon one at the last moment, like the flash of cannon through their own smoke, a house in Witching Hill Road was scientifically entered, and the silver abstracted in a style worthy of precious stones. In that instance the thieves got clear away with their

"Don't do that!" cried Delavoye. "It's our one chance of nabbing 'em." And he was out of the window and swinging down the rope-ladder while the ruffians were yet in the yard below. But they did not wait to punish his foolhardihood; the gate into the back garden banged before he reached the ground, and he hardly had it open when the last of the bunch of ropes slid hot through my hands. "After them!" he grunted, giving chase to shadowy forms across the soaking grass. His revolver squibbed again as

It was no great coincidence that we should have been speaking of Edgar Nettleton that night. Uvo Delavoye was full of him just then, and I had the man on my mind for other reasons. Besides, I had to talk to Uvo about something, since he was down with a quinsy caught from the perfect sanitation in advertised vogue on the Estate, and could hardly open his own mouth. And perhaps I had to talk to somebody about the unpleasant duty hanging over me in connection with this fellow Nettleton, who had tak

That spring I did what a great many young fellows were doing in those particular days. I threw up my work at short notice, and went very far afield from Witching Hill. It was a long year before I came back, unscathed as to my skin, but with its contents ignobly depreciated and reduced, on a visit to 7, Mulcaster Park. Uvo Delavoye met me at the station, and we fled before the leisurely tide of top-hats and evening papers, while one of the porters followed with my things. There were no changes th