the staircase door, and for the second time found it fast. After
a moment's reflection, he tried the doors of the bedrooms on his right
hand next, looked into one after the other, and saw that they were
empty, then came to the door of the end room in which the steward was
concealed. Here, again, the lock resisted him. He listened, and looked
up at the grating. No sound was to be heard, no light was to be seen
inside. "Shall I break the door in," he said to himself, "and make sure?
No; it would be giving the doctor an excuse for turning me out of the
house." He moved away, and looked into the two empty rooms in the
row occupied by Allan and himself, then walked to the window at the
staircase end of the corridor. Here the case of the fumigating apparatus
attracted his attention. After trying vainly to open it, his suspicion
seemed to be aroused. He searched back along the corridor, and observed
that no object of a similar kind appeared outside any of the other
bed-chambers. Again at the window, he looked again at the apparatus, and
turned away from it with a gesture which plainly indicated that he had
tried, and failed, to guess what it might be.

Baffled at all points, he still showed no sign of returning to his
bed-chamber. He stood at the window, with his eyes fixed on the door of
Allan's room, thinking. If Mr. Bashwood, furtively watching him through
the grating, could have seen him at that moment in the mind as well as
in the body, Mr. Bashwood's heart might have throbbed even faster than
it was throbbing now, in expectation of the next event which Midwinter's
decision of the next minute was to bring forth.

On what was his mind occupied as he stood alone, at the dead of night,
in the strange house?

His mind was occupied in drawing its disconnected impressions together,
little by little, to one point. Convinced from the first that some
hidden danger threatened Allan in the Sanitarium, his distrust--vaguely
associated, thus far, with the place itself; with his wife (whom he
firmly believed to be now under the same roof with him); with
the doctor, who was as plainly in her confidence as Mr. Bashwood
himself--now narrowed its range, and centered itself obstinately in
Allan's room. Resigning all further effort to connect his suspicion of a
conspiracy against his friend with the outrage which had the day before
been offered to himself--an effort which would have led him, if he could
have maintained it, to a discovery o