rses. He had opened and shut the
secret door three or four times the evening before, and his hands closed
almost instinctively on the two springs that must be worked
simultaneously. He made the necessary movement, and the shelves with the
wall behind it softly slid open and he sprang in. But as he closed it he
heard one of the two books drop, and an exclamation from the passage he
had just left; then quick steps from the head of the stairs; the steps
clattered past the door and into the chapel opposite and stopped.

Anthony felt about him in the darkness, found the doublet and lifted it
off the nail; slipped off his own, tearing his ruff as he did so; and
then quickly put on the other. He had no shoes; but that would not be so
noticeable. He had not seriously thought of the possibility of escaping
through the portrait-door, as he felt sure the house would be overrun by
now; but he put his eyes to the pinholes and looked out; and to his
astonishment saw that the gallery was empty. There it lay, with its
Flemish furniture on the right and its row of windows on the left, and
all as tranquil as if there were no fierce tragedy of terror and wrath
raging below. Again decision came to him; by a process of thought so
swift that it was an intuition, he remembered that the fall of the book
outside would concentrate attention on that corner; it could not be long
before the shelves were broken in, and if he did not escape now there
would be no possibility later. Then he unslid the inside bolt, and the
portrait swung open; he closed it behind, and sped on silent shoeless
feet down the polished floor of the gallery.

Of course the great staircase was hopeless. The hall would be seething
with men. But there was just a chance through the servants' quarters. He
dashed past the head of the stairs, catching a glimpse of heads and
sparkles of steel over the banisters, and through the half-opened door at
the end, finding himself in the men's corridor that was a continuation of
the gallery he had left. On his left rose the head of the back-stairs,
that led first with a double flight to the offices, the pantry, the
buttery and the kitchen, and than, lower still, a single third flight
down to the cellar.

He looked down the stairs; at the bottom of the first double flight were
a couple of maids, screaming and white-faced, leaning and pressing
against the door, immediately below the one he had just come through
himself. The door was plainly b