ow--and the dark deed is
accomplished.

What next follows?

Panic on the part of the murderer, we may be sure, as he stands one
second in a stupor of horror at what he has done; then he must have
flown--whither?

It is at this juncture that Alexander Burke steps into the hall, and
beholds nothing in the light of his own candle. It is at this point
that Royal Maillot springs from his bed, collides with the open
wardrobe door, and straightway forgets the tumult in his own physical
suffering, until Burke raps upon his door. And it is at this point
that, unless there was some third person in the house, either one or
the other of these two young men has deliberately lied. In turning
them both loose I trusted to convict the guilty man by his own conduct.
It will develop how far my course was justified.

The mute but vivid testimony would seem to lead, step by step and with
irresistible logic, straight to the private secretary--had it not been
for two circumstances which placed him once for all beyond the
possibility of having been the person who struck the blow.

First, he would have been but as a babe in Felix Page's powerful grasp;
there would have been no struggle at all.

Second, the fellow was an arrant coward, and he would never have
offered the least resistance unless convinced that he was in imminent
peril of his life--which was improbable.

The rear stairway was associated with the thought of Burke's cowardice,
for he had chosen that way to accompany Stodger: whose shoe-sole had
left the flattened fragment of paraffin there?

For some time I had been alone in the house--save, of course, for the
still, sheeted form. The place was as silent as any tomb. Then of a
sudden a sound smote upon my ear that brought me in a flash to
attention.

There is a certain fascination about a door slowly opening in a house
which you suppose to be empty. Until you have found out the cause you
ascribe it to anything from ghosts to Bengal tigers, and even then may
be sure of a surprise. The invisible agency may turn out to be only
the wind or a wandering cat. But it makes no difference what starts
the door to swinging open; the bald fact of its doing so when by all
known laws it should remain firmly shut, is _per se_ potent enough, or
hypnotic enough,--or whatever influence it is that it exerts,--to root
you at once to the spot until the Unseen declares itself. In truth, an
opening door is pregnant with such infinite p