After all, that opening and shutting of the door had been, perhaps, a delusion of his overwrought mind. Only a few minutes before there had been a noise like the spinning of a hundred Manchester cotton-looms in his brain. The horror and anguish of that hideous discovery in the loft still possessed him as he descended those stairs: what more likely than that, in such a moment, his bewildered senses should cheat him? And could he doubt Lucille’s positive assurance as to the condition of those rooms? Could he doubt her whose truth was the sheet-anchor of his life? Or could he mistrust her judgment whose calm good sense was one of the finest qualities of her character? Had it not been for Homer Sivewright’s strange story of noises heard in the dead of the night, he could have dismissed the subject far more easily. As it was he lingered for some time; listening for the faintest sound that might reach his ear, and hearing nothing but the scamper of a mouse within the wainscot, the fall of a dead fly from a spider’s web. He found Lucille waiting for him in the corridor below, very pale, and with an anxious look, which she tried to disguise by a faint smile. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘you have kept me waiting long enough. Are you satisfied now?’ ‘Not quite. I should very much like to have the keys of yonder rooms. Such a house as this is the very place to harbour a scoundrel.’ The girl shuddered, and drew back from him with a look of absolute terror. ‘Don’t be frightened, Lucille. I daresay there is no one there; a strange cat, perhaps, at most; yet cats don’t open and shut locked doors. There may be no one; only in such a house as this, so poorly occupied by two helpless women and two feeble old men, one cannot be too careful. Some notion of your grandfather’s wealth may have arisen in the neighbourhood. His secluded eccentric life might suggest the idea that he is a miser, and that there is hoarded money in this house. I want to be assured that all is secure, Lucille; that no evil-intentioned wretch has crept under this roof. Give me your keys and let me search those rooms. It will only be the work of a few minutes.’ ‘Forgive me for refusing you anything, Lucius,’ she said; ‘but my grandfather told me never to part with those keys to any one. You know his curious fancies. I promised to obey him, and cannot break my promise.’ ‘Not even for me?’ ‘Not even for you. Especially as there is not the slightest cause for this fancy of yours. That staircase door is kept always locked, the keys locked up in my grandfather’s desk. It is impossible that any living creature could go up to that attic-floor without my knowledge. Nor is it possible for any one to get into the lower part of the house unseen by me or by the Winchers.’