“Lend me your lamp, Johnson,” said Angel, and taking the bright little electric lamp in his hand, he entered the passage, followed by the others. They reached the foot of the stairs, then Angel reached back his hand without a word, and one of the two men placed therein a stick. Cautiously the party advanced up the stairway that led to Angel’s room. “Somebody has been here,” said Angel, and pointed to a patch of mud on the carpet. The door was ajar, and Jimmy sent it open with a kick; then Angel put his arm cautiously into the room and turned on the light, and the party waited in the darkness for a movement. There was no sign, and they entered. It did not require any great ingenuity to see that the place had been visited. Half-opened drawers, their contents thrown on the floor, and all the evidence of a hurried search met their eyes. They passed from the little sitting-room to the bedroom, and here again the visitors had left traces of their investigations. “Hullo!” Jimmy stopped and picked up a soft felt hat. He looked inside; the dull lining bore the name of an Egyptian hatter. “Connor’s!” he said. “Ah!” said Angel softly, “so Connor takes a hand, does he?” One of the detectives who had followed them in grasped Angel’s arm. “Look, sir!” he whispered. Half-hidden by the heavy hangings of the window, a man crouched in the shadow. “Come out of that!” cried Angel. Then something in the man’s attitude arrested his speech. He slipped forward and pulled back the curtain. “Connor!” he cried. Connor it was indeed, stone dead, with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. CHAPTER XIV OPENING THE SAFE The four men stood in silence before the body. Jimmy bent and touched the hand. “Dead!” he said. Angel made no reply, but switched on every light in the room. Then he passed his hands rapidly through the dead man’s pockets; the things he found he passed to one of the other detectives, who laid them on the table. “A chisel, a jemmy, a center-bit, lamp, pistol,” enumerated Angel. “It is not difficult to understand why Connor came here; but who killed him?” He made a close inspection of the apartment. The windows were intact and fastened, there were no signs of a struggle. In the sitting-room there were muddy footmarks, which might have been made by Connor or his murderer. In the center of the room was a small table. During Angel’s frequent absences from his lodgings he was in the habit of locking his two rooms against his servants, who did their cleaning under his eye. In consequence, the polished surface of the little table was covered with a fine layer of dust, save in one place where there was a curious circular clearing about eight inches in diameter. Angel examined this with scrupulous care, gingerly pulling the table to where the light would fall on it with greater brilliance. The little circle from whence the dust had disappeared interested him more than anything else in the room.