o make any noise in forcing an entrance; he would be able to
see almost at a glance that he had been forestalled--by the Gray Seal;
and that, as far as he was concerned, the game was up. The Magpie had
his chance! If the Magpie did not take the hint and make his escape as
noiselessly as he had entered--it was his own fault! He, Jimmie Dale,
had given the Magpie his chance.

Jimmie Dale turned from the window, and made his way out of the library
to the foot of the stairs, leaving the library door open behind him. How
long had he been? Was it more or less than the twenty-five minutes? He
did not know--only, as yet, the Magpie had not come, and now perhaps it
did not make so much difference.

Where was he going now? His foot was on the first stair--and suddenly he
drew it back, the cold sweat bursting out on his forehead. Where was
he going now? "THE FIRST ROOM ON THE RIGHT AT THE HEAD OF THE LANDING."
From his inner consciousness, as it were, the answer, in all the bald,
naked horror that it implied, flashed upon him. The first room on the
right--THAT man's room! God, how the darkness and the stillness began
to palpitate again, and suddenly seem to shriek out at him over and over
the one single, ghastly word--MURDER!

It had been with him, that thought, all the time he had been working
at the safe; but it had been there then only subconsciously, like some
heavy, nameless dread, subjugated for the moment by the work he had
had to do which had demanded the centred attention of every faculty he
possessed. But now the moment had come when there was only THAT before
him, only that, nothing else--only that, the man upstairs in the first
room to the right of the landing!

Why did he hesitate? Why did he stand there while the priceless moments
before daylight came were passing? The man was a murderer, a blotch on
society, and, his life already forfeited, he was living now only because
the law had not found him out--the man was a criminal, bloodstained--and
his life, because he had taken her father's life and had tried to take
the Tocsin's own life, stood between her and every hope of happiness,
robbing her even literally, in a material sense, of everything that
the world could hold for her! Why did he hesitate? It was that man's
life--or hers! It was the only way!

He put his foot upon the bottom step again--paused still another
instant--and then began stealthily to mount the stairs. The darkness!
There had never been, it se