and put the bag on the floor,
just inside.

"If you don't mind, I'll leave it here," he said. "They'll be searching
my room, I suppose, and I'd like to have the bag for future reference."

He went for good that time, and I put out the light. As an afterthought
I opened my door perhaps six inches, and secured it with one of the pink
conch-shells which flanked either end of the stone hearth. I had failed
the night before: I meant to be on hand that night.

I went to sleep immediately, I believe. I have no idea how much later it
was that I roused. I wakened suddenly and sat up in bed. There had been
a crash of some kind, for the shock was still vibrating along my nerves.
Dawn was close; the window showed gray against the darkness inside, and
I could make out dimly the larger objects in the room. I listened
intently, but the house seemed quiet. Still I was not satisfied. I got
up and, lighting the candle, got into my raincoat in lieu of a
dressing-gown, and prepared to investigate.

With the fatality that seemed to pursue my feet in that house, with my
first step I trod squarely on top of the conch-shell, and I fell back on
to the edge of the bed swearing softly and holding the injured member.
Only when the pain began to subside did I realize that I had left the
shell on the door-sill, and that it had moved at least eight feet while
I slept!

When I could walk I put it on the mantel, its mate from the other end of
the hearth beside it. Then I took my candle and went out into the hall.
My door, which I had left open, I found closed; nothing else was
disturbed. The leather bag sat just inside, as Wardrop had left it.
Through Miss Maitland's transom were coming certain strangled and
irregular sounds, now falsetto, now deep bass, that showed that worthy
lady to be asleep. A glance down the staircase revealed Davidson,
stretching in his chair and looking up at me.

"I'm frozen," he called up cautiously. "Throw me down a blanket or two,
will you?"

I got a couple of blankets from my bed and took them down. He was
examining his chair ruefully.

"There isn't any grip to this horsehair stuff," he complained. "Every
time I doze off I dream I'm coasting down the old hill back on the farm,
and when I wake up I'm sitting on the floor, with the end of my back
bone bent like a hook."

He wrapped himself in the blankets and sat down again, taking the
precaution this time to put his legs on another chair and thus anchor
himself.