Fall.

"In that I think you are mistaken," smiled T. B.

The doctor stopped to switch on the light, and the two discomforted
detectives watched the scene curiously.

"We have left the door ajar."

"Still I think you will find a difficulty in getting out," insisted the
other. "Open the door."

Ela pulled at it, but it was impossible to move the heavy oaken panel.

"Electrically controlled," said the doctor; "and you can neither move it
one way nor the other. It is an ingenious idea of mine, for which I may
also apply for a patent one of these days."

He took a key from his pocket and inserted it in an almost invisible
hole in the oak panelling of the hall; instantly the door opened slowly.

"I wish you a very good night," said Doctor Fall, as they stood on the
steps. "I hope we shall meet again."

"You may be sure," said T. B. Smith, grimly, "that we shall."

CHAPTER XIII

Doris Gray was face to face with a dilemma. She stood in a tragic
position; even now, she could not be sure that her guardian was dead.
But dead or alive, he had left her a terrible problem, for terrible it
seemed to her, for solution.

She liked Frank Doughton well enough, but she was perhaps too young, had
too small a knowledge of the great elements of life to appreciate fully
her true feelings in the matter; and then the influence of this polished
man of the world, this Count of the Roman Empire as he described
himself, with his stories of foreign capitals, his easy conversation,
his acquaintance with all the niceties of social intercourse, had made a
profound impression upon her. At the moment, she might not say with any
certainty, whether she preferred the young Englishman or this suave man
of the world.

The balance was against Frank, and the command contained in the will,
the knowledge that she must, so she told herself, make something of a
sacrifice, was a subject for resentment. Not even the sweetest girl in
the world, obeying as she thought the command of a dead man, who was
especially fond and proud of her, could be compensated for the fact that
he had laid upon her his dead hands, charging her to obey a command
which might very easily be repugnant and hateful to her.

She did not, in truth, wish to marry anybody. She could well afford to
allow the question of her fortune to lapse; she had at least five years
in which to make up her mind, as to how she felt toward Frank Doughton.
She liked him, there was something e