d his candle and, taking his electric
torch, crept silently into the passage.

He recalled the arrangements of the rooms as he had observed them the
previous afternoon. There were three more bedrooms adjoining his, all
empty. On the other side of the passage was the lumber room opposite,
next came the room in which Ronald slept, then the dead man's room, and
finally the sitting-room he had occupied. The door of the sitting-room
opened not very far from the head of the stairs.

Colwyn first examined the bedrooms on his side of the passage, stepping
as noiselessly as a cat, opening and shutting each door without a sound,
and scrutinising the interiors by the light of his torch. They were
empty and deserted, as he had seen them the previous afternoon. On
reaching the end of the passage he glanced over the head of the
staircase, but there was no light glimmering in the square well of
darkness and no sound in the lower part of the house to suggest that
anybody was stirring downstairs. He turned away, and made his way back
along the passage, trying the doors on the other side with equal
precaution as he went. The first three doors--the sitting-room, the
murdered man's bedroom, and Ronald's bedroom--were locked, as he had
seen them locked the previous afternoon by Superintendent Galloway, who
had carried the keys away with him until after the inquest on the body.

The lumber room at the other end of the passage had not been locked, and
the door stood ajar. Colwyn entered it, and by the glancing light of the
torch looked over the heavy furniture, mouldering linen, and stiffly
upended bedpoles and curtain rods which nearly filled the room. The
clock of a bygone generation stood on the mantel-piece, and the black
winding hole in its white face seemed to leer at him like an evil eye as
the light of the torch fell on it. But nobody had been in the room. The
dust which encrusted the furniture and the floor had not been disturbed
for months.

Colwyn returned, puzzled, to his own room. Could he have been mistaken?
Was it possible that the sound he had heard had been caused by the door
of the lumber room swinging to? No! the sound had been too clear and
distinct to admit the possibility of mistake, and it had been made by
the grating of a key in a lock, not by a swinging door. He stood in the
darkness by his open door, listening intently. Several minutes passed in
profound silence, and then there came a scraping, spluttering sound.