Then, having covered up the hole, what had he done next? Instantly I saw another vivid picture. I saw again those gray moving shapes on the roof, saw Esdaile suddenly stride to the blind-cords, saw the movement with which he had bidden me do the same, and the little bright gold rhomboids of light in the rafters as the deep blue blinds had been shut. And half an hour later he had sharply forbidden Rooke to touch the blind-cords and had petulantly refused him the key of the cellar. I felt excitement growing on me. My whole body began to glow with it. I felt myself getting nearer--nearer---- Hubbard was both right and wrong---- He was wrong in his insistence on what Esdaile must have _heard_---- But he was right about the apparatus---- Esdaile had not heard--he had _seen_--and there was no more mystery about it all than there is in putting your eye to a keyhole. IX And yet, approaching the truth as I felt myself to be, I had a deep-down feeling that at the same time I was wrong. Carefully I begun to examine the objections to my suddenly-formed theory, and instantly I was impressed by them. In the first place, take an inch board with a five-eighths hole in it, peep through, and see how much, or rather how little, of a field of vision your eye commands. Next, consider the awkwardness of peering through that hole, not in a vertical wall or door, but in horizontal planking some feet above your head. Then, most important of all, weigh the extreme unlikeliness of it that Esdaile, who had merely gone down for a bottle of wine and had no reason whatever to dream that calamity was imminent, should have had his eye at that hole at that particular moment of time. It was preposterous. All had happened so quickly. He would have had to stand on something, probably to pile up furniture; even with a pair of household steps ready in position he would have had to mount them--nay, he would first have had to _think_ of mounting them. I had no means of telling if he had previously known of that hole in his floor, but say that he had: does one, on hearing an unaccountable noise, instantly run over in one's mind every chink and cranny of one's dwelling and select one of them as an observation-post? He could have dashed upstairs again and seen for himself what was the matter in half the time. No; in the very moment when I thought I had got it, it eluded me again. Those perfectly ordinary considerations, of time, position and common sense, seemed to dispose of my notion completely. Or almost completely. There remained the hole. My conviction that the hole, in one way or another, had something to do with it was shaken, but not destroyed. And, as I was denied access to the cellar, I rose from the chair in order to make a further examination of the studio.