ise on his
elbow, the better to listen. The sound came, not from without the house,
but from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men. As
he listened he was conscious that some living creature had approached
the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle and the sound
of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and seized. He
scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light, whirled open
the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of Sir Horace say,
testily, "Don't make an ass of yourself by your over-zealousness. I've
only come down to have a word with Mr. Narkom," and to see him standing
on the threshold, grotesque in a baggy suit of striped pyjamas, with one
wrist enclosed as in a steel band by the gripped fingers of Petrie.

"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
sure it was him; and if you'd a-struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
sure as eggs."

"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of something
I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her room with
the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before her in my
night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't know how in
the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to know that
there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using either
the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched and
guarded."

"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the
first place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old
house, and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."

"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient
relic, that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied
this house before I bought it from him, one of those blessed shivery
individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in