will be easier and swifter than
picking the locks."

"Right you are, old chap. I'll slip up to Mrs. Jarret's room and fetch
it to you at once."

"No; tuck it under the mat just outside my door. As it won't do for me
to be drugged as well as the rest of you. I shan't put in an appearance
when the rest come down. Say I've got a headache, and have gone to bed.
As for my own 'night-cap'--well, I can send Dollops down to get the
butler to pour me one out of another decanter, so that will be all
right. Now, toddle off and get the key, there's a good chap. And, I say,
Bawdrey, as I shan't see you again until morning--good-night."

"Good-night, old chap!" he answered in his impulsive, boyish way. "You
are a friend, Headland. And--you'll save my dad, God bless you! A true,
true friend--that's what you are. Thank God I ran across you."

Cleek smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away; then,
hearing the other gentlemen coming down the stairs, he, too, made haste
to get out of the room and to creep up to his own after they had
assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed
round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody's
victim.

* * * * *

The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten
minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound save that
which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleek's room swung
quietly open, and Cleek himself, in dressing-gown and wadded bedroom
slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving Dollops on guard,
passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet.

The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of
Philip Bawdrey himself, opened upon this. He went to each in turn,
unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom
candle.

The sleeping-draught had accomplished all that was required of it; and
in each and every room he entered--Captain Travers's, Lieutenant
Forshay's, Mr. Robert Murdock's--there lay the occupant thereof
stretched out at full length in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep
which comes of drugs.

Cleek made the round of the rooms as quietly as any shadow, even
stopping as he passed young Bawdrey's on his way back to his own to peep
in there. Yes; he, too, had got his share of the effective draught, for
there he lay snarled up in the bed-clothes, with his arms over his head
and his knees drawn up u