he far end--some three feet from
the casing. With some difficulty he squeezed himself through the open
panel, and took a half-kneeling, half-sitting posture within. There he
struck a match, and it was a most unfortunate thing that in striking,
the box being half open, he set fire to all the matches, and was half
smothered in the atrocious stink of phosphorus which resulted. One match
burned clear on the floor of the cavity, and, rubbing his eyes, Racksole
picked it up, and looked down the hole which he had previously descried.
It was a hole apparently bottomless, and about eighteen inches square.
The curious part about the hole was that a rope-ladder hung down it.
When he saw that rope-ladder Racksole smiled the smile of a happy man.

The match went out.

Should he make a long journey, perhaps to some distant corner of the
hotel, for a fresh box of matches, or should he attempt to descend that
rope-ladder in the dark? He decided on the latter course, and he was the
more strongly moved thereto as he could now distinguish a faint, a very
faint tinge of light at the bottom of the hole.

With infinite care he compressed himself into the well-like hole, and
descended the latter. At length he arrived on firm ground, perspiring,
but quite safe and quite excited. He saw now that the tinge of light
came through a small hole in the wood. He put his eye to the wood, and
found that he had a fine view of the State bathroom, and through the
door of the State bathroom into the State bedroom. At the massive
marble-topped washstand in the State bedroom a man was visible, bending
over some object which lay thereon.

The man was Rocco!

Chapter Thirteen IN THE STATE BEDROOM

IT was of course plain to Racksole that the peculiar passageway which he
had, at great personal inconvenience, discovered between the bathroom
of No. 111 and the State bathroom on the floor below must have been
specially designed by some person or persons for the purpose of keeping
a nefarious watch upon the occupants of the State suite of apartments.
It was a means of communication at once simple and ingenious. At that
moment he could not be sure of the precise method employed for it, but
he surmised that the casing of the waterpipes had been used as a 'well',
while space for the pipes themselves had been found in the thickness of
the ample brick walls of the Grand Babylon. The eye-hole, through which
he now had a view of the bedroom, was a very minute on