over her coffee while they waited for him to come,
and of how, after Hamer had carried in his note, the good lady had
rallied the girl, and then gone off to bed because, she said, she was
sleepy--sleepy at half-past eight o'clock!

Taking into consideration the events of the evening, he had counted upon
the possibility of something happening; and the moment he entered that
room and looked round him he knew that it had done so.

The butler's evening off; the excitement and distraction occasioned by
that screaming police whistle sounding from the grounds and sending all
the servants flocking out. These things had conspired to upset the
routine of things as they should be in a well-regulated house; and lo!
the silver tray and the coffee service and the cups, used and unused
alike, had been overlooked, and there they still were, awaiting removal.
And beside them stood a liqueur stand with Chartreuse, Benedictine,
Creme de Menthe, and a half-dozen tiny Venetian glasses.

Liqueurs with coffee! He went over and looked at the glasses; so much,
so very much, depended upon that. If more than one had been used; if
Ailsa, too, had taken liqueur---- No, she had not! Only one glass had
been used, and Mrs. Raynor had gone to bed!

He rubbed the tip of his finger round the inner side of that one used
glass, and put it to his tongue.

The wine and the spirits in the decanters on the table of the
dining-room had all tasted alike. This liqueur tasted like them.

He made no comment, wasted no time. The instant he had decided that
point he left the room and went back to the hall and to the gardens
beyond the entrance.

Ailsa Lorne waited for him at the shrubbery; but it was not to the
shrubbery he went! His way lay round the angle of the house, past the
path to the ruin, past the windows of the dining-room where a drugged
man lay, and on through the darkness, until he stood in the shelter of
the trees directly opposite a broad stone terrace, upon which the
swinging French window of the library gave.

It was bright with inner light, when first he came in sight of it; but
he had barely halted before that light went out--and left it as black as
pitch.

But a moment later Cleek drew farther back in the shadow of the trees.

He had warned General Raynor to be careful to lock that window, and now
here he was not only disregarding that warning, but pushing the sashes
wide apart.

"Coming again, is she, General?" said Cleek in the soun