None of the furniture in the house had been removed, and everything his father had used during his fatal tenancy was in the room. The piano, the table at which he sat and wrote, the chairs, the bed, were there--but not in the condition in which they had been left. A demon of destruction appeared to have been at work. The bed was ripped open, the paper had been stripped from the walls, the coverings of the chairs were torn off, and the chairs themselves broken to pieces, the table was turned on end, the interior of the piano had been ransacked, the very keys were wrenched away--in the desperate attempt to discover some hidden thing, some hidden document upon which life and death might hang. More than this. The carpet had been taken up, and a few of the boards of the floor had been wrenched away, and the dust beneath searched amongst. But this was recent work; the greater part of the room was still boarded over. Frederick Holdfast had no intention himself of immediately commencing a search; he knew that it would be dangerous. For a certainty Richard Manx intended to continue it without delay, and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to leave his attic. This thought induced Frederick to consider in what way he could best watch the villain's movements, without being himself detected. To do this in the room itself was impossible. There was no chance by the window; it could be done only from the ceiling or from the adjoining room. To effect an opening in the ceiling in so short a time as he had at his disposal was impracticable, and even could it be done, there were dangerous chances of detection. After a little reflection, he decided that it could be best done from the adjoining room, and the moment this was decided upon he saw that Richard Manx had to some extent assisted him. The laths which separated the rooms were fragile, the plaster was thinly spread; many of the laths in the dividing wall had been laid bare by the stripping of the paper. He stood up on the bed, and without an appreciable effort, thrust his finger between the laths, and through the wall paper of the adjoining apartment, choosing that part of the wall which would afford him a favourable point of espionage. Alighting from the bed, he carefully obliterated the marks of footsteps on the clothes, and then left the room for the one adjoining. The door was unlocked, and the key was in the inside. More from the locality than from the aperture, so securely small had he made it, he saw at once that it was practicable, and he ascertained by moving the table close to the wall, that a safe footing was afforded for his watch. This contented him, and for a time he rested. There were still no signs of Richard Manx. One o'clock had struck, and remembering that at that hour the basket of food was to be lowered into the area, he hastened downstairs, and arrived just in time to receive it.