He dropped gently to his hands and knees, and began, with a thousand precautions, to crawl like a serpent towards the outer hall. The darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly over his head. At last his hands touched the portiere. He hesitated, listened, and put one hand under the portiere. Then, relighting the lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portiere, and clutched for the unseen intelligence. But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the _cabinet de toilette_, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants' quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily. CHAPTER XVII POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN Then it was that he heard a noise, something between scratching and fumbling, on the further side of the front-door, in the main corridor of the flats. He could see through the ground glass over the door that the corridor was lighted as usual. He thought: 'Someone is breaking the seal on that door!' And his next idea was: 'Since the seal is being broken in the full light of the public corridor, it is being broken by someone who has the right to break it. Only one man has the right, and that man is Francis Tudor's executor, Senior Polycarp.' The noise of scratching and fumbling ceased, and a key was placed in the lock. Hugo hastily extinguished his lamp, and hid behind the portiere. Immediately the lamp was extinguished he observed, what he had not observed before, that a faint light came through the aperture of the door leading to the servants' quarters. The front-door opened, and he heard footsteps in the hall. Then ensued a pause. Then the footsteps advanced, and the newcomer evidently went into the room where the faint light was. 'Come out of that!' Yes; it was Polycarp's quiet, mincing, imperious voice. 'Come out of it yourself!' The answering tones were gruff, heavy, full, the speech of a strong coarse-fibred man. Hugo peeped cautiously through the portiere. Polycarp was backing slowly out of the room into the hall, followed by a tall, dark, scowling man, who bore an ordinary kitchen candle. Polycarp halted in the middle of the floor. The man also halted; he seemed to be towering over Polycarp in an attitude of menace. 'Let me pass,' said the man. 'I've had enough of this.' Polycarp smiled scornfully. 'You're caught,' said he. 'You're one of Hawke's men, aren't you?' 'Go to h---!' was the man's ferocious reply. 'Answer my question, sir.' 'What if I am?' the man grumbled.