st the windows at the end of the suite, and he had a very clear though
a transient view of two menials on the box-seat; one of those menials he
knew must be Jock. Hence Jock must have escaped from the state suite by
one of the numerous doors.

Denry tried one door after another, and they were all fastened firmly on
the outside. The gilded handles would turn, but the lofty and ornate
portals would not yield to pressure. Mystified and startled, he went
back to the place from which he had begun his explorations, and was even
more seriously startled, and more deeply mystified to find nothing but a
blank wall where he had entered. Obviously he could not have penetrated
through a solid wall. A careful perusal of the wall showed him that
there was indeed a door in it, but that the door was artfully disguised
by painting and other devices so as to look like part of the wall. He
had never seen such a phenomenon before. A very small glass knob was the
door's sole fitting. Denry turned this crystal, but with no useful
result. In the brief space of time since his entrance, that door, and
the door by which Jock had gone, had been secured by unseen hands. Denry
imagined sinister persons bolting all the multitudinous doors, and
inimical eyes staring at him through many keyholes. He imagined himself
to be the victim of some fearful and incomprehensible conspiracy.

Why, in the sacred name of common-sense, should he have been imprisoned
in the state suite? The only answer to the conundrum was that nobody was
aware of his quite unauthorised presence in the state suite. But then
why should the state suite be so suddenly locked up, since the Countess
had just come in from a drive? It then occurred to him that, instead of
just coming in, the Countess had been just leaving. The carriage must
have driven round from some humbler part of the Hall, with the lady in
black in it, and the lady in black--perhaps a lady's-maid--alone had
stepped out from it. The Countess had been waiting for the carriage in
the porch, and had fled to avoid being forced to meet the unfortunate
Denry. (Humiliating thought!) The carriage had then taken her up at a
side door. And now she was gone. Possibly she had left Sneyd Hall not to
return for months, and that was why the doors had been locked. Perhaps
everybody had departed from the Hall save one aged and deaf retainer--he
knew, from historical novels which he had glanced at in his youth, that
in every Hall that res