Closing the hall door, Patsy groped his way to the other and found an electric switch key on the wall near the casing. He turned it and a flood of light revealed a handsomely furnished parlor, also the partly open doors of two adjoining bedrooms. He could see through one of them a broad bed, with other sleeping-room furnishings, also two large trunks near one of the walls. A roll-top desk in the parlor caught his eye. The cover was raised, and he turned in that direction. “I’ll see what that contains, for a starter,” thought Patsy. “’Twas very good of him to leave it open. I’ll go through it like a shot through a gun. The drawers first and then----” Then, on the contrary, the hurried search he had begun abruptly ended. The silence was broken by a threatening command from behind him, a voice so curt and cold that no sane man would have ignored it. “Cut that! Sit down in the chair, or you’ll drop on the floor in a condition you’ll not fancy.” Patsy, kneeling at the desk, one of the drawers of which he had pulled open, swung round like a flash. A tall, smoothly shaved, black-eyed man had stepped noiselessly from one of the bedrooms. There was murder in his eyes, also in his right hand. It held a revolver, aimed point-blank at the crouching detective. CHAPTER VI. UNDER TRUE COLORS. Patsy Garvan realized on the instant that he had been trapped; that he was in wrong, as well as right; that the man who now held him up must have suspected something threatening, and instead of responding to the knock on the outer door, had quickly extinguished the light in the parlor and then stepped into the bedroom to await developments. That, at least, was the way Patsy immediately sized it up. As quickly, too, recalling the bandage around his neck and his upturned collar, he resorted to a subterfuge which he thought might serve his purpose and prevent an exposure of his true identity and designs. Sharply eying the threatening intruder, therefore, whom he rightly inferred was the absent physician’s valet, or more properly his confederate, Patsy coolly answered: “Don’t get miffed, old chap, and go slow with that gun. It might go off by chance, you know, and I don’t like the way it’s pointing. You’ve got me all right, and I’m not fool enough to butt my head against a brick wall.” Draper viewed him with a scornful curl of his thin lips. “Sit in that chair,” he repeated, revolver leveled. “Keep your hands on its arms, too, or this gun will go off in the direction it’s pointed--but not by chance.” “You wouldn’t kill a fellow in cold blood, would you?” asked Patsy, obeying. “Yes, or hot blood. It would matter little to me.” “That would be foolish. You might be executed for murder.” “Not by a long chalk. A man may protect his property with a gun, or that of his employer.” “So I’ve heard,” Patsy dryly allowed. “What do you want here?” “Anything I could get worth lifting.” “You mean that you came here to steal something?”