Miss Allison nodded and went back onto the landing.

Her appearance there coincided with the opening of Timothy Harte's bedroom door. Timothy stuck a tousled head out and desired to be told what all the row was about.

Miss Allison allowed this grossly unfair description of her quiet colloquy with the butler to pass unchallenged and merely said that nothing was up. Timothy looked severely from her to Pritchard and said with a marked nasal intonation: "Say, sister, get wise to this! You can't put nothin' across on me!"

"Say, brother," retorted Miss Allison, not to be outdone, "let me advise you to scram!"

Timothy grinned and, apparently construing this request as an invitation, came out onto the landing. "I thought you looked as though you might be sporting," he remarked. "Honestly, what is up?"

Pritchard gave a warning cough, but Miss Allison judged it wisest to admit Mr. Harte into their confidence.

"We don't quite know, but we're afraid Mr. Kane may have been taken ill on his walk last night or have met with some accident. He doesn't seem to have come home."

Timothy's eyes grew round, but the most partial of observers could scarcely have supposed his expression to denote anything but profound relish of these disturbing tidings. "I say!" he gasped. "I jolly well told you so! I bet I had a kind of instinct about it!"

"Don't be so absurd!" said Miss Allison rather irritably. "How could you have had an instinct, as you call it, that Mr. Kane would have a heart attack? Besides, you never told me anything of the kind."

"Yes, I did!" said Timothy. "At least, not about a heart attack. But I distinctly remember saying that I shouldn't be a bit surprised if someone was murdered here in the night. Actually, I never thought about it being Uncle Silas, but I probably had a sort of premonition all the same."

The butler looked outraged and startled, but Miss Allison, unimpressed, said: "If that's your idea of a joke, it's a bad one. There's no question of murder, but we are rather worried about your uncle, and that kind of suggestion isn't in the best of good taste."