nd made the change in
a twinkling. Another and more subtle "change"--yet made even
quicker--altered his countenance so completely that not one trace of
likeness to Mr. Philip Barch remained. A moment later he had passed
swiftly out of the room and was tapping upon Lord St. Ulmer's door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A BLUNDER AND A DISCOVERY

Cleek's knuckles had no more than touched the panel before he became
aware of a singular and most significant circumstance. A faint "snick"
sounded upon the other side of the door, a quick, metallic "snick,"
which his trained ears identified at once as the switching off of an
electric light; and quick as he was in opening the door, it was an
utterly black room he looked into. Still, that did not dismay him. He
knew full well that the button controlling the switch must be near the
bed for it to be so quickly reached; and Lord St. Ulmer was most
certainly _in_ bed, as the creaking springs told him, and it was always
within his power to make an awkward slip and, with every appearance of
an accident, to switch the light on again.

But for the present--as he had thoughtfully stepped in and closed the
door behind him that he might not stand there in the full glow of the
lights in the outer passage, seen, but himself unseeing--for the present
he was in blackness as dark as ink and as thick as tar, as far as the
eye was concerned; and through that blackness the sharp staccato of an
excited man's voice was flinging a challenge at him.

"Who are you? What do you want? What the devil do you mean by coming in
here, unasked?" that voice rapped out with an unmistakable note of alarm
in it.

"Master sent me up, your lordship," replied Cleek in the bland, deeply
deferential tones of the well-trained manservant. "He is anxious to know
if your lordship would prefer some especial dish prepared for your
lordship's dinner, or if----"

He got no further than that, for the rasping, excited voice broke
sharply in, and the violent jangling of the bed springs told that the
speaker had as sharply turned over in bed.

"Your master sent you up about my dinner?" the voice trumpeted out in a
sort of panic. "Sent you about my _dinner_--and by that door?"

Then came yet another sound--the jingle of a spoon or a fork against a
plate or a cup--and hard after it a noise of rustling paper, and Cleek
had just time to realize that he had blundered, that there must be
another staircase and another door by which