or upon a void.

The little figure stood motionless a moment, listening towards the bed.
Then it stole over, bending close to the sleeping man. With skilful
light fingers Anne lifted one of the sleeper's heavy hands, then let it
drop again upon the bedclothes. Chesney did not stir--his breathing did
not change.

With a brisk movement of satisfaction, the nurse now drew a black,
oblong object from the pocket of her dressing-gown, and going swiftly
over to the fireplace, put the fender noiselessly aside, and knelt down
on the hearth. She was sure, quite sure now, as sure as one could be of
anything theoretically divined, that the hypodermic syringe and morphia
were concealed somewhere in that chimney-place. She had looked there
before, but not in the exhaustive way that she meant to look now. She
had even felt along the shelf of the chimney-throat with her hands, but
there had been nothing. Now, inch by inch, like a little Miss Sherlock
Holmes, she meant to examine that cold, sooty cavity. The black tube in
her hand was a small electric pocket-light, such as had just come in
about that time. When she had looked before, she had used her bedroom
candle. Now she meant to turn that bright, electric gleam on every inch
of the brickwork and metal. Slowly she drew the pencil of light from
side to side, lying flat, and beginning her search under the bars of the
grate; then, crouching, she directed the ray higher, towards the bend of
the chimney-throat, feeling, tapping, with her free hand as she did so.
A fire had evidently been made there recently, probably on the day of
Chesney's arrival; for, though the grate had been freshly polished only
that morning and the housemaid's broom had swept the back of the
chimney, yet a slight fluff of soot clung to it higher up. Anne touched
this soot, pressing down her fingers firmly, delicately, feeling for
some crevice, some loose bit of brick or iron. All was firm and cold.
She sat back on her heels, disappointed. She looked--crouching there in
her grey wrapper, with the short, black curls framing her thin, baffled
little face--like some determined child who had decided to watch and
surprise Santa Claus in his descent from the roof--and who had watched
in vain. Then suddenly she knelt up again. Something had caught her
clever eyes. She noticed--and at this, the well-regulated little
timepiece of her heart began to tick hurriedly--yes, she had noticed
that in one corner of the chimney-throa