“Bolt the front door-go on-quick.”

In the office he found Miss Jade still slumped into her chair. She looked up at him, her black eyes wide and unwinking. She opened her mouth to scream, and Bisker said:

“Keep your trap shut, marm.”

He poured whisky into a glass, added a splash of soda-water and offered it to Miss Jade, who continued to regard him with a fixed stare.

“Take a holt ofyerself, marm. Come on-drink ’erup.”

“Bisker!” she cried. “Is Mr. Rice dead?”

“As mutton, marm,” replied Bisker.

Miss Jade noted the remarkable metamorphosis in Bisker, Bisker the retiring, apologetic, shuffling Bisker, and she thought it evenmore strange that she liked him and experienced a feeling of comfort-of all feelings she might be expected not to be expecting. Her arms slid outward over the desk and her head fell forward to rest upon them as she burst into a fit of weeping.

Even as she wept she heard the gurgle of liquid pouring into a glass. She did not observe Bisker fill a glass to the brim and drink it without more than one swallow. She heard the siphon sizzle when Bisker half filled his glass with soda-water for a “chaser.” Then she heard him at the telephone calling for Police Headquarters, Melbourne.

Her weeping ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She moved her body upwards. Bisker was sprawling over the desk speaking into the receiver, describing what had happened. She felt inexpressibly tired. Almost mechanically, she picked up the drink Bisker had poured for her and began to take quick sips from the glass. Behind Bisker stood George and she thought how extraordinary it was that George appeared calm and self-possessed.

Presently Bisker replaced the telephone.

“A patrol car in an outer suburb nearest to us will be here in twenty minutes,” he told her. “I’m to keep everyone out until they arrive. You had better go and see that the guests don’t wake up to what’s happened.”