hesitated.

He opened the sitting-room door, and went in, leaving it open behind
him.

The door was hung (like all the other doors in the house) on large
old-fashioned hinges. When it was opened, a crevice was opened between
the door and the post. I signed to my two companions to look
through this, so as to keep them from showing themselves. I placed
myself--outside the door also--on the opposite side. A recess in the
wall was at my left hand, in which I could instantly hide myself, if he
showed any signs of looking back into the corridor.

He advanced to the middle of the room, with the candle still in his
hand: he looked about him--but he never looked back.

I saw the door of Miss Verinder's bedroom, standing ajar. She had put
out her light. She controlled herself nobly. The dim white outline of
her summer dress was all that I could see. Nobody who had not known it
beforehand would have suspected that there was a living creature in the
room. She kept back, in the dark: not a word, not a movement escaped
her.

It was now ten minutes past one. I heard, through the dead silence, the
soft drip of the rain and the tremulous passage of the night air through
the trees.

After waiting irresolute, for a minute or more, in the middle of the
room, he moved to the corner near the window, where the Indian cabinet
stood.

He put his candle on the top of the cabinet. He opened, and shut, one
drawer after another, until he came to the drawer in which the mock
Diamond was put. He looked into the drawer for a moment. Then he took
the mock Diamond out with his right hand. With the other hand, he took
the candle from the top of the cabinet.

He walked back a few steps towards the middle of the room, and stood
still again.

Thus far, he had exactly repeated what he had done on the birthday
night. Would his next proceeding be the same as the proceeding of last
year? Would he leave the room? Would he go back now, as I believed he
had gone back then, to his bed-chamber? Would he show us what he had
done with the Diamond, when he had returned to his own room?

His first action, when he moved once more, proved to be an action which
he had not performed, when he was under the influence of the opium for
the first time. He put the candle down on a table, and wandered on a
little towards the farther end of the room. There was a sofa there.
He leaned heavily on the back of it, with his left hand--then roused
himself, and returned to