skirted the table. The footsteps seemed only
beyond my reach, and at the other side of the room the swinging door
into the pantry was still swaying when I caught it.

I made a misstep in the pantry, and brought up against a blank wall. It
seemed to me I heard the sound of feet running up steps, and when I
found a door at last, I threw it open and dashed in.

The next moment the solid earth slipped from under my feet, I threw out
my hand, and it met a cold wall, smooth as glass. Then I fell--fell an
incalculable distance, and the blackness of the night came over me and
smothered me.

CHAPTER XII

MY COMMISSION

When I came to, I was lying in darkness, and the stillness was absolute.
When I tried to move, I found I was practically a prisoner: I had fallen
into an air shaft, or something of the kind. I could not move my arms,
where they were pinioned to my sides, and I was half-lying,
half-crouching, in a semi-vertical position. I worked one arm loose and
managed to make out that my prison was probably the dumb-waiter shaft to
the basement kitchen.

I had landed on top of the slide, and I seemed to be tied in a knot. The
revolver was under me, and if it had exploded during the fall it had
done no damage. I can hardly imagine a more unpleasant position. If the
man I had been following had so chosen, he could have made away with me
in any one of a dozen unpleasant ways--he could have filled me as full
of holes as a sieve, or scalded me, or done anything, pretty much, that
he chose. But nothing happened. The house was impressively quiet.

I had fallen feet first, evidently, and then crumpled up unconscious,
for one of my ankles was throbbing. It was some time before I could
stand erect, and even by reaching, I could not touch the doorway above
me. It must have taken five minutes for my confused senses to remember
the wire cable, and to tug at it. I was a heavy load for the slide,
accustomed to nothing weightier than political dinners, but with much
creaking I got myself at last to the floor above, and stepped out, still
into darkness, but free.

I still held the revolver, and I lighted the whole lower floor. But I
found nothing in the dining-room or the pantry. Everything was locked
and in good order. A small alcove off the library came next; it was
undisturbed, but a tabouret lay on its side, and a half dozen books had
been taken from a low book-case, and lay heaped on a chair. In the
library, however, eve