e said, when he came out and rejoined them some
minutes later. "Logan, you silly fellow, you'll do no good fighting
against Fate. Make the best of it and stop where you are."

That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what
he afterward termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of
Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament
and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under
tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus
flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a
poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the
billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and
the detective as best he could. Cleek needed but little entertaining,
however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand,
and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until
eleven o'clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.

His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor
striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he
knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a
loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling
out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright. He jumped out of
bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find
it alive with startled people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a
dressing-gown thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his
shaking hand.

"The stable!" he cried out excitedly. "Come on, come on, for God's sake.
Some one has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was
left empty, empty!"

But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for
the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard
outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full
blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the
impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man's death agony, and at the
foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!

"He would get in, Sir Henry; he'd have shot one or the other of us if we
hadn't let him," said one of the outer guards, as Sir Henry and Cleek
appeared. "He would lie before the door and watch, sir, he simply would;
and God have mercy on him, poor chap; he was faithful to the last!"

"And the last mi