at!" he cried; "not in?"

"No, sir," said the girl, with wide-open, frightened eyes.

Dunbar turned to Cumberly.

"You said there was no other way out!"

"There IS no other way, to my knowledge."

"Where's his room?"

Cumberly led the way to a room at the end of a short corridor, and
Inspector Dunbar, entering, and turning up the light, glanced about
the little apartment. It was a very neat servants' bedroom; with
comfortable, quite simple, furniture; but the chest-of-drawers had
been hastily ransacked, and the contents of a trunk--or some of its
contents--lay strewn about the floor.

"He has packed his grip!" came Leroux's voice from the doorway. "It's
gone!"

The window was wide open. Dunbar sprang forward and leaned out over the
ledge, looking to right and left, above and below.

A sort of square courtyard was beneath, and for the convenience of
tradesmen, a hand-lift was constructed outside the kitchens of the three
flats comprising the house; i. e.:--Mr. Exel's, ground floor, Henry
Leroux's second floor, and Dr. Cumberly's, top. It worked in a skeleton
shaft which passed close to the left of Soames' window.

For an active man, this was a good enough ladder, and the inspector
withdrew his head shrugging his square shoulders, irritably.

"My fault entirely!" he muttered, biting his wiry mustache. "I should
have come and seen for myself if there was another way out."

Leroux, in a new flutter of excitement, now craned from the window.

"It might be possible to climb down the shaft," he cried, after a brief
survey, "but not if one were carrying a heavy grip, such as that which
he has taken!"

"H'm!" said Dunbar. "You are a writing gentleman, I understand, and yet
it does not occur to you that he could have lowered the bag on a cord,
if he wanted to avoid the noise of dropping it!"

"Yes--er--of course!" muttered Leroux. "But really--but really--oh, good
God! I am bewildered! What in Heaven's name does it all mean!"

"It means trouble," replied Dunbar, grimly; "bad trouble."

They returned to the study, and Inspector Dunbar, for the first time
since his arrival, walked across and examined the fragmentary message,
raising his eyebrows when he discovered that it was written upon the
same paper as Leroux's MSS. He glanced, too, at the pen lying on a page
of "Martin Zeda" near the lamp and at the inky splash which told how
hastily the pen had been dropped.

Then--his brows drawn together--he stooped to