When he had disposed of the police Raegenssen collected the papers from his safe and studied each one of them closely. Then he replaced them and went to the kitchen at the back of the house, where he brewed himself some coffee, and, armed with this, returned to the library and lighted a cigar. Half-way through the smoke he discarded the stump fastidiously and rose. At one end of the room was a small writing-desk, which he unlocked, drawing down the folding front. Then he took off his coat and white waistcoat and began to work. A tiny reading-lamp on the top of the desk was all the light in the room. He looked a grotesque figure, his leonine head stooped over his work, his glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose, his protruding tongue following the movements of his hands, with the direct light bringing out his angular face in high relief. It was two hours later that he heard the sound--the creak of a board under a wary foot. He laid down his stylo carefully and switched out the reading-lamp. On the threshold of the library he halted. The hall was in darkness. Facing him, though he could not see them, were three doors, and he had left each one of them slightly ajar. Almost certainly his study would be the goal of this new trespasser, he decided, and passed over the heavy carpet without sound. He was just outside the study door when he heard a curious noise--three deliberate claps. It was so obviously designed to attract attention that another man would have paused, but Raegenssen was a man without fear. He slid through the opening and stood with his back to the wall, every sense on the alert. "Who iss that?" he demanded. "Wouldn't you like to know?" boomed back a mocking voice. It was disguised, yet there was something familiar in it which he could not place. His searching fingers located the electric light switch, but he flicked the lever over and back without results. The wires were cut--he found the loose ends hanging free a foot further down. "What is...?" he said. And then came a rollicking chuckle that, unemotional as he was, seemed to set a fine thread of ice vibrating in his spine. "Maddock!" he roared uncertainly, and then he saw a shadow move, and stumbled forward. He touched cloth, and with a deep-throated grunt he closed. The unknown struck at him with something that whistled as it fell, but Raegenssen bowed his head and the life-preserver thudded agonisingly into his shoulder instead of into his skull. He grabbed the striker's hand, and for a short while they swayed and panted in the darkness. His opponent was heavy and strong above the average, but he was no match for the giant Swede. Presently they fell together, and Raegenssen heaved himself astride the writhing man and sought to gather in the arms that struck viciously at him. "Now we shall see," he growled, and then a chance blow crashed into his solar plexus and he rolled limply away, gasping in a torment of nausea.