the servants came and went,
and that, in all probability, judging from that telltale clink of metal
and china, his lordship's dinner had already _been_ served, when he made
another and a yet more embarrassing discovery: his lordship was not
alone in the room. Some one was there with him, some one who simply gave
an amazed exclamation without putting it into words, then moved swiftly,
snicked on the light, and scattered all the darkness with one dazzling
electric glare.

In that sudden outburst of light Cleek saw a bed and a man on it, a man
who had turned over, so that his face was to the opposite wall, while an
open newspaper--one of many--almost covered his head. Beside that bed
there was a table and a salver loaded with many dishes, and beyond that
an open door, and beyond that again a gaping passage and the head of a
staircase that led up from below.

And between the table and the door he saw something more startling and
dismaying than all the rest.

With his hand on the switch that controlled the electric light, his head
bent forward, and his small, ferret eyes brightly gleaming, Mr. Harry
Raynor stood looking him in the face.

"Hullo! I say, who the devil are you?" snarled that startled and amazed
young man. "What's your game? What are you up to? You're no servant in
this house, dash you! You can't fool _me_ on that point, b'gad! What are
you doing here? What are you up to? What's your little dodge, eh?"

For the present Cleek's "little dodge" was to get out of that room as
expeditiously as possible. For here was an emergency which could not be
adequately met by mental finesse; a situation which could result only in
exposure and the complete undoing of all his plans if he made any
attempt to bolster up his claim to being one of the servants in this
house, or stopped to be "interviewed" by young Raynor; and being never
slow to make up his mind or to act, he did both now with amazing
celerity.

Without one word of reply to young Raynor's challenge, indeed without
one second's hesitation, he backed out of the door by which he had just
entered, shut it sharply after him, snicked out the electric light in
the passage, and dodged back into his own room with the fleet
soundlessness of a hunted hare, shutting and bolting himself in with no
more noise than a cat would have made in getting over a garden wall.

In a twinkling, young Raynor, although taken somewhat aback by this
unexpected action, was out after him, b