quiry, on this occasion): 'If she spoke to
nobody, how do you know she is fatigued?' Eustace hands Dexter a morsel
of paper, and answers: 'Don t be a fool! I found this on the hall table.
Remember what I have told you about keeping quiet; good-night!' Eustace
retires. Dexter looks at the paper, and reads these lines in pencil:
'Just returned. Please forgive me for going to bed without saying
good-night. I have overexerted myself; I am dreadfully fatigued.
(Signed) Helena.' Dexter is by nature suspicious. Dexter suspects Mrs.
Beauly. Never mind his reasons; there is no time to enter into his
reasons now. He puts the ease to himself thus: 'A weary woman would
never have given herself the trouble to write this. She would have found
it much less fatiguing to knock at the drawing-room door as she passed,
and to make her apologies by word of mouth. I see something here out
of the ordinary way; I shall make a night of it in my chair. Very good.
Dexter proceeds to make a night of it. He opens his door; wheels himself
softly into the corridor; locks the doors of the two empty bedrooms, and
returns (with the keys in his pocket) to his own room. 'Now,' says D.
to himself, 'if I hear a door softly opened in this part of the house,
I shall know for certain it is Mrs. Beauly's door!' Upon that he closes
his own door, leaving the tiniest little chink to look through; puts out
his light; and waits and watches at his tiny little chink, like a cat at
a mouse-hole. The corridor is the only place he wants to see; and a lamp
burns there all night. Twelve o'clock strikes; he hears the doors below
bolted and locked, and nothing happens. Half-past twelve--and
nothing still. The house is as silent as the grave. One o'clock; two
o'clock--same silence. Half-past two--and something happens at last.
Dexter hears a sound close by, in the corridor. It is the sound of
a handle turning very softly in a door--in the only door that can be
opened, the door of Mrs. Beauly's room. Dexter drops noiselessly from
his chair onto his hands; lies flat on the floor at his chink, and
listens. He hears the handle closed again; he sees a dark object flit
by him; he pops his head out of his door, down on the floor where nobody
would think of looking for him. And what does he see? Mrs. Beauly! There
she goes, with the long brown cloak over her shoulders, which she
wears when she is driving, floating behind her. In a moment more she
disappears, past the fourth bedroom, an