The Beetle: A Mystery

inst the wall upon the landing, and of their screaming as I went past. But whether any effort was made to arrest my prog

g down, in the gloom, unseen articles of furniture, with myself sometimes on top, and sometimes under them. In a trice, each time I fell, I was on my feet again,-until I went crashing against a window which was concealed by curtains. It would not have been strange had I crashed through it,-but I was spared that. Thru

of the parapet I went, obtaining, with my naked feet, a precarious foothold on the latticework,-then down I commenced to scramble. I never did get a proper hold, and when I had descended, perhaps, rather more than half the distance-scraping, as it seemed to me, every scrap of skin off my body in the

elf confronted by a tall, slenderly built man, with a long, drooping moustache, and an overcoat but

the bal

leasant in his voice, and some qualit

ng he went on,-with a cu

ar?-Is it simple burglary, or simpler murder?-Tell me the g

some excuse for thinking so. He did not look mad

elony, shall I not shower blessings on the head

entle push as he did so,-and I was

I did that night between Lowndes Square and Walham Green I should li

of the house with the open window,-the packet of letters-which