as
in my room. I could discern the figure of a man in the shadow of the
wardrobe near the chair on which I had placed my clothes when I took
them off. I leant over the side of the bed and switched on the
electric light; the figure turned. It was the dark man with the glass
eye!

"What the devil are you doing in my room?" I asked in none too polite a
tone.

He was not at all disconcerted, but stood looking at me, replacing his
pince-nez.

"Well, really," he replied, "wonders will never cease. I thought I was
in my own room!"

I knew he was lying.

"I fail to perceive," I said, sitting up in bed, "in what manner you
could have mistaken this room for your own. In the first place the
door is locked."

"Just so," remarked my visitor, "that's exactly where it is; I came in
at the window."

"The window?" I repeated.

"Yes, the window. I couldn't sleep, so took a stroll up and down the
balconies, and when I returned to my room, as I thought, I came in here
by mistake."

The excuse was plausible, but I didn't believe a word of it. I was in
a dilemma, and sat scratching my head. I could not prove that the man
was lying, and therefore had to take his word.

"Very well, then," I said in a compromising tone, "having made the
mistake, and it being now nearly five, perhaps you will be able to find
your way back to your room and go to sleep."

I thought I was putting the request in as polite a manner as possible,
and I expected him to move off at once.

He did nothing of the kind. With a quick movement of his hand to his
hip, he produced a revolver and covered me with it.

"Where's that key?" he asked.

He took my breath away for a few moments and I couldn't answer him,
then I regained my presence of mind.

"What key?" I asked, though I had a pretty shrewd idea as to the key he
wanted.

"The key which dropped out of your pocket this afternoon."

"I don't keep it in bed with me," I replied. "I'll get out and fetch
it for you, you are quite welcome to it."

I temporised with him, but I was perfectly determined in my own mind
that he should never have it while I lived.

I slipped out of bed and he still held the pistol pointed towards me
but in a careless way. I think he was thrown off his guard by my
apparent acquiescence.

The clock of the Abbey struck five and he involuntarily turned his head
at the first stroke; in that moment I made a sweeping blow with my left
arm and knocked the revolver out