wood's handkerchief, left there by accident? She examined it at the
corners. In the second corner she found her husband's name!

Her first impulse hurried her to the staircase door, to rouse the
steward and insist on an explanation. The next moment she remembered the
Purple Flask, and the danger of leaving the corridor. She turned, and
looked at the door of Number Three. Her husband, on the evidence of the
handkerchief had unquestionably been out of his room--and Mr. Bashwood
had not told her. Was he in his room now? In the violence of her
agitation, as the question passed through her mind, she forgot the
discovery which she had herself made not a minute before. Again she
listened at the door; again she heard the slow, regular breathing of the
sleeping man. The first time the evidence of her ears had been enough to
quiet her; _this_ time, in the tenfold aggravation of her suspicion and
her alarm, she was determined to have the evidence of her eyes as well.
"All the doors open softly in this house," she said to herself; "there's
no fear of my waking him." Noiselessly, by an inch at a time, she
opened the unlocked door, and looked in the moment the aperture was wide
enough. In the little light she had let into the room, the sleeper's
head was just visible on the pillow. Was it quite as dark against the
white pillow as her husband's head looked when he was in bed? Was the
breathing as light as her husband's breathing when he was asleep?

She opened the door more widely, and looked in by the clearer light.

There lay the man whose life she had attempted for the third time,
peacefully sleeping in the room that had been given to her husband, and
in the air that could harm nobody!

The inevitable conclusion overwhelmed her on the instant. With a frantic
upward action of her hands she staggered back into the passage. The door
of Allan's room fell to, but not noisily enough to wake him. She turned
as she heard it close. For one moment she stood staring at it like a
woman stupefied. The next, her instinct rushed into action, before her
reason recovered itself. In two steps she was at the door of Number
Four.

The door was locked.

She felt over the wall with both hands, wildly and clumsily, for the
button which she had seen the doctor press when he was showing the room
to the visitors. Twice she missed it. The third time her eyes helped her
hands; she found the button and pressed on it. The mortise of the lock
inside fell b