Passing the constable on duty at one of the doorways and making our
way through the group of loiterers there, we ascended amid
conflicting odours to the topmost floor. A ladder was fixed against
the wall communicating with a trap in the ceiling. Several
individuals in their shirt sleeves and all smoking clay pipes had
followed us up. Bristol turned upon them.

"Get downstairs," he said--"all the lot of you, and stop there!"

With muttered imprecations our audience dispersed, slowly returning
by the way they had come. Bristol mounted the ladder and opened the
trap. Through the square opening showed a velvet patch spangled
with starry points. As he passed up on to the roof and I followed
him, the comparative cleanness of the air was most refreshing after
the varied fumes of the staircase.

Side by side we leaned upon the parapet looking down into the dirty
courtyard which was the theatre of this weird mystery; looking down
upon the stage, sordidly Western, where a mystic Eastern tragedy
had been enacted.

I could see the constable standing beside the crushed thing upon
the stones.

"Now," said Bristol, with a sort of awe in his voice, "where did he
fall from?"

And at his words, looking down at the spot where the dwarf lay, and
noting that he could not possibly have fallen there from any of the
buildings surrounding the courtyard, an eerie sensation crept over