Mr. Bradfield softly turned the key in the lock. Then, going quickly to his workshop, which was only a few yards away, he returned with a pair of nippers, and mounting on a chair, he neatly snipped the bell-wire in two. “Now,” said he to himself, “when they find they’re locked in, they will ring the bell, and nobody will come. And that door will stand a good many kicks.” He looked at his watch as he ran quickly downstairs, and slipped out of the house without meeting anybody. “I can get a cab at the stand,” thought he. “I shall just have time to catch the train. I shall book to London, but I shall get out at Ashford, and go to Queensboro’, and on to Flushing. That’s just the last thing I should be expected to do. So that if Stelfox has been fool enough to chum up with the police on his lunatic’s behalf, I can give them leg-bail easily.” CHAPTER XXXV. STELFOX IS RETICENT NO LONGER. Mr. Bradfield awoke, on the morning after his abrupt departure from Wyngham, with a start of surprise at finding himself in a strange place. He had been troubled by no pangs of a guilty conscience, not even by fears of an imaginary pursuer. Accusations might be made against him certainly, some of which could be supported by evidence which might weigh heavily with a judge and jury. But the real foundation of his misdeeds was one so astounding, requiring so much digging and delving before a good case could be made out, that he might have remained securely at Wyngham for months to come, might almost indeed have defied Dick and the law to do their worst, if it had not been for Stelfox. What Stelfox knew his late master was not quite sure; but the man’s respectful reticence during long years, during which his suspicions of foul play had grown into certainties, had so strongly impressed the master, that Mr. Bradfield had never felt safe since Stelfox had left his service. So that Mr. Bradfield, for whom Wyngham House and its treasures had lost the charm of novelty, had thought it safest, as well as pleasantest, to decamp, leaving only the bare bones of his stolen property to be wrangled over in litigation. What had woke him he did not know. He seemed to have jumped from the deepest, sweetest slumber into broad wakefulness. He looked out at the sky, which he could just see between the white dimity curtains of the window, and he saw a bright little line of light which showed him that the summer sun was already high in the heavens. He looked at the foot of the bed, and saw, instead of the brass and beaten iron-work of his own magnificent bedstead, the polished mahogany of the old-fashioned four-poster. Then he remembered where he was, heaved a sigh of satisfaction at having left the anxieties of Wyngham behind him, and turned over in bed for another doze.