ermined to
turn in, although I had never felt more wide awake in my life. One
parting glance I cast into the skeleton orchard and was on the point
of standing up, when--although no breezed stirred--a shower of ivy
leaves rained down upon my head!

Brushing them away irritably, I looked up--and a second shower dropped
fully upon my face and filled my eyes with dust. I drew back, checking
an exclamation. What with the depth of the embrasure, due to the great
thickness of the wall, and the leafy tangle above the window, I could
see for no great distance up the face of the building; but a faint
sound of rustling and stumbling which proceeded from somewhere above
me proclaimed that some one, or something, was climbing either up or
down the wall of the corner tower in which I was housed!

Partially removing the dust from my smarting eyes, I returned to the
embrasure, and stepping from the chair on to the deep ledge, I grasped
the corner of the quaint, diamond-paned window, which I had opened to
its fullest extent, and craned forth.

Now I could see the ivy-grown battlements surmounting the tower (the
east wing, in which my room was situated, was the oldest part of
Graywater Park). Sharply outlined against the cloudless sky they
showed ... and the black silhouette of a man's head and shoulders
leant over directly above me!

I drew back sharply. The climber, I thought, had not seen me, although
he was evidently peering down at my window. What did it mean?

As I crouched in the embrasure, a sudden giddiness assailed me, which
at first I ascribed to a sympathetic nervous action due to having seen
the man poised there at that dizzy height. But it increased, I swayed
forward, and clutched at the wall to save myself. A deadly nausea
overcame me ... and a deadly doubt leapt to my mind.

In the past, Sir Lionel Barton had had spies in his household; what
if the dark-faced Greek, Homopoulo, were another of these? I thought
of the '45 port, of the ghostly rapping; and I thought of the man who
crouched upon the roof of the tower above my open window.

My symptoms now were unmistakable; my head throbbed and my vision grew
imperfect; there had to be an opiate in the wine!

I almost fell back into the room. Supporting myself by means of the
chair, the chest of drawers, and finally, the bed-rail, I got to my
grip, and with weakening fingers, extracted the little medicine-chest
which was invariably my traveling companion.