Is this the way ?" "Yes, but you'll have to tread carefully, and mind you don't fall over anything.

A good deal of my paraphernalia--bottles, retorts and the like--is stored in the little recess at the foot of the staircase, and my assistant is careless and leaves things lying about." Evidently the caution was necessary, for a minute or so after they had passed on and disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen stairway, Petrie and his colleagues heard a sound as of something being overturned and smashed, and laughed softly to themselves.

Evidently, too, the danger of the furnace had been grossly exaggerated by Sir Horace, for when, a few minutes later, the door opened and closed, and Narkom's men, glancing toward it, saw the figure of their chief reappear, it was plain that he was in no good temper, since his features were knotted up into a scowl, and he swore audibly as he snapped the shutter over the bull's-eye and handed it back to Petrie.
"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent ?" "No--not a thing!" he replied.

"The silly old josser! pulling me down there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why, the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's a bend--an abrupt 'elbow'-- that nothing but a cat could crawl up.

And that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly back to bed by the way he came, and if--" There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp, wheezing sound.