“If ’e’s found hiding about upstairs after all this upset,” said Mr. Mergleson, and left the rest of the sentence to a sympathetic imagination. “Now it’s light,” said Mr. Mergleson after a slight pause, “I think we better just go round and ’ave a look for ’im. Both of us.” So Thomas clad himself provisionally, and the two man-servants went upstairs very softly and began a series of furtive sweeping movements—very much in the spirit of Lord Kitchener’s historical sweeping movements in the Transvaal—through the stately old rooms in which Bealby must be lurking.... § 8 Man is the most restless of animals. There is an incessant urgency in his nature. He never knows when he is well off. And so it was that Bealby’s comparative security under the sofa became presently too irksome to be endured. He seemed to himself to stay there for ages, but as a matter of fact, he stayed there only twenty minutes. Then with eyes tempered to the darkness he first struck out an alert attentive head, then crept out and remained for the space of half a minute on all fours surveying the indistinct blacknesses about him. Then he knelt up. Then he stood up. Then with arms extended and cautious steps he began an exploration of the apartment. The passion for exploration grows with what it feeds upon. Presently Bealby was feeling his way into the blue parlour and then round by its shuttered and curtained windows to the dining-room. His head was now full of the idea of some shelter, more permanent, less pervious to housemaids, than that sofa. He knew enough now of domestic routines to know that upstairs in the early morning was much routed by housemaids. He found many perplexing turns and corners, and finally got into the dining-room fireplace where it was very dark and kicked against some fire-irons. That made his heart beat fast for a time. Then groping on past it, he found in the darkness what few people could have found in the day, the stud that released the panel that hid the opening of the way that led to the priest hole. He felt the thing open, and halted perplexed. In that corner there wasn’t a ray of light. For a long time he was trying to think what this opening could be, and then he concluded it was some sort of back way from downstairs.... Well, anyhow it was all exploring. With an extreme gingerliness he got himself through the panel. He closed it almost completely behind him. Careful investigation brought him to the view that he was in a narrow passage of brick or stone that came in a score of paces to a spiral staircase going both up and down. Up this he went, and presently breathed cool night air and had a glimpse of stars through a narrow slit-like window almost blocked by ivy. Then—what was very disagreeable—something scampered. When Bealby’s heart recovered he went on up again.