was only a stupendous,
ghastly hoax, which my uncle had in mind, but to what end, or who the
intended victim, I could not in the least conceive.

"And then came a crash that made me think the house had collapsed, and
I knew I had been asleep. I was only dimly sensible that the noise,
whatever its source, had been loud and decidedly out of place in this
household at such an hour.

"I sprang from bed, and first thing banged against the door of a
wardrobe, which had swung open. It nearly knocked my brains out, and
hurt something awful. So I straightway forgot all about the noise, and
after groping a while for matches, presently found one and lighted the
candle. Then I filled the basin on the wash-stand and bathed my eye."

What followed was something more than corroborative of Burke's
statement. After the secretary had rapped and Maillot thrown open the
door, the latter was considerably surprised at Burke's very patent
fright.

"The plain truth of the matter is that the fellow was in a condition of
cowering terror," was Maillot's language, "and when I learned that he
had n't made the first move toward ascertaining the cause of the
disturbance, why, I simply pushed him to one side and went to see about
it myself.

"Burke disgusted me. He would neither approach the body nor allow me
to get very far away from him; and when I broached the matter of going
after help, he even went so far as to argue with me that there was no
necessity for either of us leaving the house until daylight. The mere
suggestion that he should wait here alone threw him into a blue funk;
so I was finally obliged to tell him flatly, that if he did n't go, I
would, and that he should n't follow me, either.

"Well, apparently he chose the lesser of two evils, and went to fetch
the police."

I remembered Burke's reluctance to come down the front stairs, after I
had sent Stodger to conduct him to me, together with my colleague's
remark to the effect that "Burke did n't have much sand"; clearly, the
secretary was a coward.

And now, too, I recalled the triumphant light in his pale eyes, while
we were inspecting the concealed safe--the only time I had detected any
expression in them--as if he had already anticipated the predicament
Maillot would be in after relating his story of what had brought him to
this house, and the occurrences of last night. How could he have had
an inkling of all this?

However, at the time I did n't waste many minu