Quite right!" cried Mr. Belford. "Go ahead! I
will get to the car! Go ahead!"

Off ran the agile politician to his appointed post; and the chauffeur,
armed with a heavy spanner, disappeared in the shadow of the barn.
Sheffield, taking from his breast-pocket an electric torch, strode up to
the doorless entrance of the abandoned farm, and waited.

CHAPTER XXVI

GRIMSDYKE

Not a sound disturbed the silence of the deserted place, save when the
slight breeze sighed through the trees of the adjoining coppice, and
swayed some invisible shutter which creaked upon its rusty hinges.

An owl hooted, and the detective was on the alert in a moment. It was a
well-known signal. Was the owl a feathered one or a human mimic?

No other sound followed, until the breeze came again, whispered in the
coppice, and shook the shutter.

Then the chauffeur's whistle came, faintly, and with something tremulous
in its note; for the adventure, though it offered little novelty to the
experience of the Scotland Yard man, was dangerously unique from the
mechanic's point of view. But where the Right Hon. Walter Belford led it
was impolitic, if not impossible, to decline to follow. Yet, the whistle
spoke of a man not over-confident. "Severac Bablon" was a disturbing
name!

Sheffield pressed the knob of the torch and stepped into the bare and
dirty room beyond.

The beam of the torch swept the four walls, with faded paper peeling in
strips from the damp plaster; showed a grate full of rubbish, a battered
pail, and a bare floor littered with debris of all sorts, great cavities
gaping between many of the planks. A cupboard was searched, and proved
to contain a number of empty cans and bottles--nothing else.

Into the next room went the investigator, to meet with no better
fortune. The third was a big kitchen, empty; the fourth a paved
scullery, also empty--with the chauffeur at the door, holding his
spanner in readiness for sudden assault.

"Upstairs!" said Sheffield shortly.

Up the creaking stairs they passed, their footsteps filling the place
with ghostly echoes.

A square landing offered four doors, all closed, to their consideration.

Sheffield paused, and listened.

The owl had hooted again.

He directed the ray of the torch upon the door on the immediate right of
the stairhead.

"We're short-handed for this!" he muttered; "but it has to be risked
now. Stay where you are and be on the alert. Watch those other doors."
He