From the adjoining room came the noises of a heavy sleeper--snores and wheezy breathing. The head butler, without doubt; a great hulk of a man whom it would be no easy task to rouse even if I were in a position to rouse any one, which, of course, I was not--now less than ever. Aside from his strenuous slumbers the wing was silent, yet somehow portentously so, as only a house of sleepers can be. Beyond my refuge a night light was burning in the hall. I could discern this from the crack beneath the door. Obviously I had no choice but to leave in that direction, even though it was highly probable that I should encounter Wilkes in the corridor. Still, such misadventure must be chanced. With madly beating heart I crossed the room and stealthily tried the handle. Imagine my amazement when I found that the door was locked--from the inside! The man must be in the room with me! This thought so filled me with terror that throwing caution to the winds I unlocked and opened the door, fleeing down the dimly lighted corridor like a bat out of Hades, as Peaches would put it, and plunging down the first staircase that appeared. The hall below was completely dark, and I must have taken a wrong turning, because in what seemed about two minutes I was completely lost. For once my nerves gave way completely. I wanted to shriek but could only make a little clicking sound which nobody seemed to hear. Then I began to run, because I thought something was after me--I did not know what. I couldn't see anything, and yet I felt overpowered by terror. It flashed across my brain that perhaps Sandro--or rather, Wilkes--did not need to unlock his door in order to leave his room; perhaps he came through the closed door and only kept it locked to prevent people from discovering that he didn't really exist. The thought gave new impetus to my speed, and for time uncounted I flew about that horribly vast and silent mansion as noisily and irrationally as if I were myself some poor lost spirit. I seemed wholly unable to find my way back to my own apartment or to locate any familiar door at which I might venture to knock and beg for help. And the realization that those two night prowlers in the garden might at any moment break into whatever part of the house I was in at the instant did nothing to induce a greater serenity of mind. Moreover, I could not seem to find a flight of stairs leading upward, and when at length I emerged from the service wing it was to find myself in the ghostly main hall once more. And there it was that a sudden unexpected encounter with reality shocked me back to some degree of common sense. From this main hall, which was two stories in height a corridor led directly to the library at the extreme left end of the main building.