It was nearly two hours later before Rigby crept cautiously down the steps and emerged by the way in which he had entered the house. The street as before was absolutely deserted; so far as Rigby could see he might have been in a city of the dead. Despite his disguise and the artistic make-up of his grimy face, an acute spectator would not have failed to notice the agitation of his features. He crept with trembling footsteps to the roadway, and clung to the railings with a swaying air of one who has seen things the tongue refuses to describe. Then his natural courage, fanned by the cool air of the evening and the sense of being no longer isolated, returned with virile force to him. Mechanically he fumbled in his rags and produced from a breast pocket a silver cigarette-case, that might have got him into serious trouble if a lynx-eyed policeman had been near at hand.

"Well, I have seen some queer things in my time, but, as the poet says, 'never aught like this,'" Rigby said, with teeth that chattered a little. "I really must have one of my own cigarettes."

Despite his excitement, Rigby was conscious that he ought to be just a little ashamed of himself. He had always prided himself upon the fact that his nerves were perfectly under control and that nothing ever put him out, otherwise he would not have occupied the position he did at the Planet office. He began to feel the effect of the cool night air, which braced him like a tonic. As he stood there waiting for something--though he would have found it difficult to say what--a policeman came slowly down the street. Rigby stooped and pretended to be busy with his stock of papers.

Some spirit of mischief moved him to chaff the representative of the law, and at the same time test to the utmost the disguise that he was wearing.

"Paper, sir?" he asked. "All the winners--horrible murder in Grosvenor Square. Ain't you going to buy one?"

Apparently the officer was one of the good-tempered sort, for he only smiled, and in a more or less gruff voice ordered the news-vender to move on.

"Just waiting for my pal, sir," Rigby explained. "I have never come down this street before, an' I'll take good care never to come down here again. Why, half these houses seem to be empty. Look at that show opposite. 'Ow long since anybody has lived there?"

"Before I came on the beat, anyway," the policeman explained. "Do you want to take one?"

With a laugh at his own pleasantry the policeman stalked off down the street, leaving Rigby easier in his mind and quite satisfied that his disguise would stand any ordinary test.

He leaned against the area railings absolutely undecided as to what to do next. With a certain new caution almost amounting to cowardice--a feeling of which he would be ashamed at any other time--Rigby turned his back upon the man who was advancing down the street. At the same time, so full was he of the horrors that he had lately witnessed, the amateur detective quite forgot the fragrant cigarette so out of keeping with his character. The stranger pulled up and, crossing the pavement, tapped Rigby familiarly on the shoulder.

"You are not so clever as you think you are," the stranger remarked coolly. "You may be a very smart chap, Dick, and I may be a very dull one, but I have certainly sufficient brains to know that the average newspaper tout does not smoke Turkish cigarettes. Besides, after our conversation this morning, I felt pretty certain that you would make an attempt to get inside that house."

Rigby laughed in a way that suggested that his nerves were in a considerably frayed condition.

"So that's you, Jack," he said, with a sigh of relief. "Yes, you are quite right; in fact, I told you I should not rest to-night until I had seen the inside of that house."

"And did the expedition come up to expectations?" Masefield asked eagerly.

"My dear fellow, I have had some weird experiences in my time, but I would not go through the last hour again for the wealth of the Indies. In fact, if I tell you what I've seen, you would set me down for a doddering lunatic."

The look of self-satisfaction on Jack's face faded away. He shivered with a strange weird feeling, that strange presentiment of something dire about to happen. Again, why should he doubt the fact that something terribly out of the common had happened to Rigby after his own amazing experiences?

With his hand on the arm of his friend, he walked abstractedly the whole of the terrace. Here a great arc light threw a stream of pallid blue upon the motley coloring displayed upon a big hoarding. In the centre of the hoarding, well displayed, was the terrible placard disclosing the grinning features of Nostalgo.

"By Heaven!" Jack exclaimed, "there is no getting away from the features of that grinning devil. I know as well as if I had seen it down in black and white that the awful experiences which have so changed you lately have to do with that yellow face."

"I am not going to deny it," Rigby replied; "and, what is more, I am not going to tell you what I have seen in the last two hours--at least, not at present. And now tell me, to change the subject, what is your private opinion of Spencer Anstruther?"

To say that Jack was taken aback by the suddenness of the question would be a mistake. It will be remembered that on the occasion Masefield last dined with Anstruther he had pointed out to Claire the amazing likeness between Nostalgo and her guardian. Not that it was possible for anybody to notice this except when Anstruther was moved to great emotion; but the fact remained. And now to find that Rigby's mind was so strangely moved in the same train of thought was, to say the least of it, disturbing.

"What do you mean by asking that question?" Jack said guardedly.

"For goodness' sake do not let us have any of this unnecessary caution between friends like ourselves," Rigby said, with great feeling. "Believe me, my dear friend, I am not asking this question out of idle curiosity. As man to man, is he a magnificent genius or the greatest criminal the world has ever seen?"

Thus put to it, Jack had no hesitation; indeed, he could have had no hesitation in replying to such a direct question as this.

"I am going to speak quite candidly to you," he said. "As you are perfectly well aware, knowing the man quite as well as I do, he is, like most geniuses, an exceedingly poor man. At the same time, unlike most geniuses, he is as unscrupulous as he is clever. I have more than an idea that he could tell us all about this affair, but I prefer to pose ............