being impregnable; and as the grounds for suspicion against Mr. Wildred were not yet strong enough to resort to such violent means, there was nothing to do but wait. He was wired for to London at once."

160

"Naturally he would prefer being on the spot," I said, with something like a sneer. "All the same, I am very sure that there is another means of communicating with the octagonal 161 room and the tower besides the main door through the passage." And I mentioned the mysterious disappearance of the servant, which had on Christmas Day led me to believe in the existence of a secret way of exit.

161

"We did look about for something of the sort, and even went down a cellar," said the detective, "but saw not the slightest sign to suggest a hidden door."

"Well, go on then to Mr. Wildred's return," I exclaimed impatiently. "I am anxious to learn why it has been decided that I put you on the wrong track."

"When he came home he admitted very frankly that he had been annoyed at the bother occasioned by our telegram, but appeared by that time to have recovered from his vexation, and to be inclined to laugh the matter off. He let us know in a moment that he guessed how the information had come, but we said nothing, of course, to confirm his suppositions.

"In the first place he opened the iron door, explained its workings as though he took some pride in its mechanism, which he said he had 162 invented himself. Then he showed us into the octagonal room, which he had had fitted up as a studio and smoking-room combined. The little door you had seen behind the drapery merely led into a cupboard containing boots, an artist's model–a jointed figure of wood–and other odds and ends. It was concealed only because it was not 'an object of beauty,' Mr. Wildred said.

162

"We then proceeded to the tower, where the chemical experiments are made. There is a small room, reached by mounting a winding skeleton stairway of iron, and there we were shown Mr. Wildred's apparatus. I know something of chemistry myself, having had a fad that way when I was a boy, and I could see that everything he had was straight and above-board. A big fireplace in the room accounts for the sparks you saw when you approached the house that day, and Mr. Wildred voluntarily mentioned that there had been something wrong with the flues, so that his experiments could not be conducted properly, and he had sent for an expert to come down from 

 Prev. P 68/132 next