ooked
out from his safe hiding-place and--_saw_! The eyes were narrowed in the
ivory-tinted face, the jaw heavy and undershot as a bull-dog's, while a
dark coloured mustache straggled untidily across the upper lip. The
moonlight, cruelly clear, picked out the point of something sharp that
shone in one clenched hand, something that looked like a knife--that
_was_ a knife.

Then the figure vanished and the door closed noiselessly behind him.

Hmm. So this question of the Frozen Flame was as urgent as all that, was
it? To attempt to murder him, here--in the house of the Squire of
Fetchworth. He wriggled out of his hiding place, a little stiff from
the cramped position he had held, and guardedly lit his candle. Then he
surveyed the bed with set mouth and narrowed eyes. There was a sharp
incision through the clothes, an incision quite three inches long, that
had punctured the pillow which lay beneath them--the pillow that had
saved him his life--and buried itself in the mattress beneath. Gad! a
powerful hand that! He stood a moment thinking, pinching up his chin the
while. He had had his suspicions of Borkins, but the face that he had
seen in the moonlight was not the butler's face. _Whose, then, was it?_

CHAPTER XIII

A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

Through the long watches of the night Cleek sat there thinking, his chin
sunk in one hand, his eyes narrowed down to pin-points, the whole alert
personality of the man vitally dominant. No, he would not tell any one
of the happening except Dollops and Mr. Narkom. It would only invite
suspicion, throw the house into a state of unrest which was the very
thing that he was anxious to avoid. As dawn broke, and the danger for
that night was past, he got to his feet, plunged his face into cold
water, which cleared away the cobwebs, undressed, and then tackled the
question of the injured bedding.

The mattress could be turned--that was easy enough, and the slit would
probably not be noticed. The bedclothes, too, might be turned the other
way up, and with care the injured parts tucked in tightly at the bottom.
It would leave them a little short at the top perhaps, but that couldn't
be helped. Suspicion must be allayed at all costs. Time enough to bring
the would-be murderer to justice when he had solved the riddle in its
entirety. There were two pillows, so he took the damaged one, tore off
its case, and tucked that away in his kit-bag, pushed the bag under the
bed, and then set ab