A careful scrutiny of the drawing-room showed that Sorrell's vigil had been a short one. The fire had not been made up after Mrs. Prescott left the watcher; a novel, open at page five, lay face downwards upon the table; a pipe of tobacco, which had only just been lighted and then suffered to go out, was beside it, together with a tumbler of spirit-and-water, quite full, and evidently not so much as sipped from. The defaulter's hat and coat were gone from their place in the hall, as also his stick. Mrs. Prescott had picked up a silk neckerchief in the passage that led to the drawing-room from the hall. A chair was overturned in the middle of the room; but beyond this no sign of anything untoward could be found. A small seedy-looking man from London soon afterwards arrived, and quickly and quietly made himself master of the situation so far as it was at present developed. The Prescotts and their information interested him chiefly. After hearing all they could tell him he examined the room for himself, attaching enormous importance to a trifle that had escaped our attention. This was a candle by the light of which Walter Sorrell read his book. It had evidently burned for some time after the room was deserted, but not down to the socket. The grease had guttered all upon one side, and a simple experiment showed the cause. Lighting another candle and placing it on the same spot, it burned steadily until both window and door were opened. Then, however, the flame flickered in the draught thus set up; the grease began to gutter, and the candle threatened to go out at any moment. "What do you gather from that?" I inquired of the detective. "This," he answered; "taking account of the open window and door, the overturned chair and the candle left burning, it's clear enough that when the gent did go out, he went in the devil of a hurry, made a bolt, in fact, as though some one was on his track at the very start. There's no one else in the house, you say?" "Only the blessed dead," said Mr. Plenderleath. But I thought involuntarily of what I had seen the preceding evening. Could it be that some horrid vision had appeared in the still hours of night, and that, eager for his employer's welfare, even in such a terrible moment, the young man had seized my wealth and leapt out into the dark night rather than face the dire and monstrous phantom? If so, what had become of him?