Trevor went and looked.

　　It was rather an interesting sight. An earthquake or a cyclone mighthave made it a little more picturesque, but not much more. The generaleffect was not unlike that of an American saloon, after a visit fromMrs Carrie Nation (with hatchet). As in the case of Mill's study, theonly thing that did not seem to have suffered any great damage was thetable. Everything else looked rather off colour. The mantelpiece hadbeen swept as bare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor.

　　Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latest addition to hisart gallery, the photograph of this year's first fifteen. It was awreck. The glass was broken and the photograph itself slashed with aknife till most of the faces were unrecognisable. He picked up anothertreasure, last year's first eleven. Smashed glass again. Faces cutabout with knife as before. His collection of snapshots was torn into athousand fragments, though, as Mr Jerome said of the papier-machetrout, there may only have been nine hundred. He did not countthem. His bookshelf was empty. The books had gone to swell thecontents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off.

　　Pages twenty-two to thirty-one of _Vice Versa_ had parted from theparent establishment, and were lying by themselves near the door. _TheRogues' March_ lay just beyond them, and the look of the coversuggested that somebody had either been biting it or jumping on it withheavy boots.

　　There was other damage. Over the mantelpiece in happier days had hung adozen sea gulls' eggs, threaded on a string. The string was stillthere, as good as new, but of the eggs nothing was to be seen, save afine parti-coloured powder--on the floor, like everything else in thestudy. And a good deal of ink had been upset in one place and another.

　　Trevor had been staring at the ruins for some time, when he looked upto see Clowes standing in the doorway.

　　"Hullo," said Clowes, "been tidying up?"Trevor made a few hasty comments on the situation. Clowes listenedapprovingly.

　　"Don't you think," he went on, eyeing the study with a critical air,"that you've got too many things on the floor, and too few anywhereelse? And I should move some of those books on to the shelf, if I wereyou."Trevor breathed very hard.

　　"I should like to find the chap who did this," he said softly.

　　Clowes advanced into the room and proceeded to pick up variousmisplaced articles of furniture in a helpful way.

　　"I thought so," he said presently, "come and look here."Tied to a chair, exactly as it had been in the case of Mill, was a neatwhite card, and on it were the words, _"With the Compliments of theLeague"._"What are you going to do about this?" asked Clowes. "Come into my roomand talk it over.""I'll tidy this place up first," said Trevor. He felt that the workwould be a relief. "I don't want people to see this. It mustn't getabout. I'm not going to have my study turned into a sort of side-show,like Mill's. You go and change. I shan't be long.""I will never desert Mr Micawber," said Clowes. "Friend, my place is byyour side. Shut the door and let's get to work."Ten minutes later the room had resumed a more or less--thoughprincipally less--normal appearance. The books and chairs were back intheir places. The ink was sopped up. The broken photographs werestacked in a neat pile in one corner, with a rug over them. Themantelpiece was still empty, but, as Clowes pointed out, it now merelylooked as if Trevor had been pawning some of his household gods. Therewas no sign that a devastating secret society had raged through thestudy.