The storm rages without, tearing through the Square with fierce, shrieking moans and cries, like a forest of wild beasts in pain. There is a leak in the roof of the house, and the men within it, when there is a lull, hear the raindrops falling, pat, pat, pat. One of the men shudders at a terrifying thought, born of the memory of a night when a murder was committed there. If a human being were on the roof, stabbed to the heart, so might _his_ life's blood drip through the aperture. In the terrified man's fancy he sees the red stains on the floor, sees them spread through the air, though nothing is visible in his actual sight. A muffled cry escapes him. "Hush!" From the other man. "Do not raise your voice above a whisper." "Why not?" From the trembling man. "There is no one here but ourselves." "Fool! The house may be watched. Why do you shrink from me? Are you afraid?" "No." But the speaker's lips and face are white. "Can we not have a light?" "Not here. I have matches and a candle with me. There is a screen in the office--here is the door--step in, softly, softly! Now, help me move the screen before the window. Come, ghost, spectre, or vision, show yourself!" "For God's sake, stop!" "Coward! Ah, that lightning flash! And now the thunder! Listen to the rain. It is a deluge." They stoop and light the candle, crouching by the writing-table. "Keep the light near the ground. The window is masked, but if the candle is raised its glimmer might be seen from the Square. Move this way. Nearer to this dumb image of wax in its hooded chair. It would be a rare achievement to breathe life into it, to compel it to speak, and reveal where the treasure we seek is hidden." So low are their voices that it would be impossible for any person acquainted with the speakers to recognise them by that sound. They are standing at the back of the hooded chair, and the waxwork figure of the Chinaman, with its fixed and pallid face, stares straight at vacancy. "Speak!" whispers the bolder of the two, in savage derision, and shakes the chair--so violently that the Charles the Second cane it holds in its hand slips and falls to the ground. "I recall a story," he continues, picking up the stick, and still in a whispered voice, "of a treasure of great value being concealed for generations in a cane like this. If this were hollow it could be used for just such a purpose. What are these protuberances round the rim? Hold the light closer, closer! A circlet of old English letters." By accident he presses one of the letters, and as he does so is conscious of a movement in the silver knob at the top of the cane. Bending over it he sees that the letter he pressed is B, and that the pressure has caused the figure 2 to spring up on the surface of the knob.