ng for! Some connection
between this room and the garage?"

Gatton, who was kneeling examining a lower panel of the door, looked
up with a grim smile.

"Perhaps I am," he replied.

By the tone of his voice I knew that whatever he had sought he had
failed once more to find. Presently, desisting from this quest of his,
he stood and stared curiously for some time at a recess immediately
behind one of the high-backed chairs drawn up to the supper table. We
had already explored this recess and had found it to be vacant. Gatton
advanced towards it and drew aside the curtain which was draped in the
opening.

It was a recess about four feet wide by three deep and it contained
nothing in the nature of furniture or ornament.

"Does anything strike you as curious about this arrangement?" said my
companion.

I looked for a long time, but failed to detect anything of a notable
nature.

"Nothing," I said, "except that it seems a peculiar idea to drape a
curtain before a recess in that way."

"And such a curtain!" said Gatton, fingering the texture.

I in turn touched the material with my fingers and found it to be an
extremely heavy velvet. Looking upward, I noticed that it was attached
to a rod set so high in the wall on either side that the top of the
drapery actually touched the ceiling.

"Well," said Gatton, looking at me oddly, "in addition to the texture
of the curtain do you notice anything else?"

"No," I confessed.

"Well," he continued, "you may remember that yesterday when I examined
this place, I had to drape the curtain over a chair, which I moved
here for the purpose, in order to see the recess."

"So you did," I said; "I remember."

"Well, doesn't it strike you as odd? If you'll notice the way it is
fastened above, you will see that it is not upon rings. In other words
it is not intended to be opened. You see that it is in one piece so
that anybody having occasion to enter the recess would have to lift it
aside and let it fall to behind him."

I studied the arrangement of the drapings more closely and saw that
his statement was correct; also I saw something else, and:

"This room has been lighted by gas at some time!" I cried. "Here, up
under the picture-rail, is a plug."

"Most houses are provided both with gas and electric light about
here," replied Gatton abstractedly.

But even before he had finished speaking I saw his expression change,
and in a moment he had dragged a chair into the reces