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trellis-work had once screened off the garden. ‘Lummy! Come and look here. Ever seen such a sight?’
    Indeed, it was a garden that seemed now more like a bit of the primeval chaos than anything else. For nearly half a century the vegetation had grown, or not grown, at its own will, and mingled with it was a confusion of empty tins, of old rags, of ashes and cinders – for dustmen had long ceased to call – of piles of rotting paper blown here by the wind and then trapped.
    â€˜Even a dead cat,’ Wild said, pointing to one. ‘I suppose when anybody round about wants to get rid of anything, they chuck it over the fence.’
    â€˜I am wondering about this,’ Bobby said. ‘She must have food, and so on, at times, and she must pay for what she has. That means she must get money somehow, unless she has a hoard in the house, which doesn’t seem very likely. I should like to see the money she pays her bills with. If it’s of current date, that would prove someone must be sending or giving it to her.’
    â€˜Yes, I daresay,’ agreed Wild. ‘Only it’s not police business. She’s doing no harm. No Act of Parliament against living alone – at least, not yet; though very like there will be soon, when some of them up there happen to think of it.’
    They went to the back of the house, and Bobby said:
    â€˜Shall we knock?’
    â€˜What for?’ asked Wild. ‘You’ll get no answer; no one ever does. If it’s about the football, serve those kids right if they lose it. Teach ’em not to play in the streets any more, perhaps.’
    â€˜Might as well try,’ Bobby said, always an obstinate and persistent young man.
    He went up to the front door. The bell, one of the old-fashioned wire bells, hung, in evident uselessness, on a length of broken wire. The heavy knocker, red with rust, Bobby lifted, and beat a rat-tat upon the door, and, even as he did so, it opened and swung back.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Girl
    Surprised indeed was Bobby that this door, so evidently so long unused, should thus swing open instantly in response to his summons, but still more surprised was he – surprised, indeed, to the very limit of astonishment – by what he now saw. For there, upon the threshold, stood no such ancient withered, half-crazed crone as he had expected, but, instead, a young, fresh, dainty girl, smartly and fashionably dressed, her youthful elegance most strange against that dreary background of neglect and desolation.
    In figure she was small and slight, very fair, with fair hair that had a tint of gold, and very clear eyes of the deepest blue. Her features were small: a tiny mouth, a small though well-shaped chin, a delicately chiselled nose – all so dainty that the big, wide-opened blue eyes above seemed enormous by comparison. Her complexion, all cream and roses, was as Heaven had given it and her own good sense had left it; and her small, gloved hands clasped to her body a crystal-handled umbrella as though she loved it.
    But yet there was something strained and rigid in the attitude of, this small person of an almost Dresden-china-shepherdess beauty; and while Bobby still gaped at her in his frank bewilderment – while, behind, good Sergeant Wild gasped out almost audibly: ‘Bless my soul’ – he grew aware that in her great eyes of clearest blue there showed an unimaginable terror; that through those red lips, curved like Cupid’s bow, there might break at any moment a wail of terror and despair; that those small hands clasping the umbrella so closely to her were held like that in a desperate attempt to still the wild beating of her heart.
    How long they would have stayed like this, watching each other – Bobby in blank and complete bewilderment; the girl paralysed, as it seemed, by the sheer extremity of the terror that held her in its grip – none can tell, but, from behind, the comfortable, untroubled