135“I? No.”

135

“Then who can have been in my rooms?”

I heard St. Hilary chuckle in the darkness.

“Rather, say, who is in your room? Pianissimo, mio caro. It will be amusing to surprise this midnight guest. No, no; not a light, and silence.”

Pianissimo, mio caro.

My rooms were on the second floor. We had to pass through the sala, a huge apartment, at least forty feet long, a T-square in shape, and it extended from the canal to the garden at the rear, the smaller part of the T-square running along the side of the canal. The ceiling of immense beams stretched from wall to wall. Once these beams had been gaily decorated with geometrical designs; now they were dingy with a faded coat of whitewash. The room was lighted by the feeble rays of a night-lamp in a niche of the wall.

We tiptoed across the cold floor. Softly, very softly, I pushed down the straight handle of the door leading into my room. I drew this door cautiously toward me. A second door still hid us from the intruder, if intruder there was. Cautiously I pushed it ajar, and looked through the crack, St. Hilary squinting over my shoulder.

Duke da Sestos was seated in my room, and on a table immediately in front of him ticked the 136clock. A lighted candle stood on either side of it. He sat huddled in the deep armchair, his head sunk on his breast. But he was not asleep. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair; his legs were comfortably crossed. A box of cigarettes was at his elbow, and at his elbow, too, a decanter of brandy–my brandy.

136

I closed the door, and at that moment we heard very faintly from within an exquisite chime of silver bells. Then the hour of one was struck.

“By Jove, St. Hilary,” I said savagely, “is that brute to amuse himself all night, drinking my liquors, listening to the chimes of our clock, unmolested?”

“Not unmolested,” chuckled St. Hilary softly.

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