By this time Harry was as wide-awake as ever he had been in his life. His uneasiness returned in full force, and was now magnified into suspicion. The landlord’s furtive look and unsatisfactory manner; the story of the closing of the gates of Urach; his lame explanation about the room; the absence of a fastening to the trap-door; the disappearance of the landlord’s forbidding companion; the reappearance of the same man with a number of others; their stealthy movements, and the fact that they had tied their horses up in the copse instead of bringing them into the courtyard—all these were links in a chain of suspicious circumstance, of little significance singly, but disturbing when taken together. And the stableman’s tune—what did that mean? Was it actually the tune of "Widdicombe Fair", and not merely one resembling it? Had the ostler heard it from Fanshawe’s lips? Was he on the track of the explanation of the disappearance of one of Marlborough’s messengers? Quickly and noiselessly Harry slipped on his clothes. His first duty was, of course, to deliver the duke’s letter; nothing must interfere with that. His suspicions might be utterly groundless, but on the other hand they might be only too well justified. He must be on the safe side; it was necessary to put himself out of harm’s way. Only one staircase led to his room: it sprang from the narrow entrance-hall of the inn, on each side of which were the doors of the rooms on the ground floor. He could scarcely hope to be able to pass down, however stealthily, without being discovered; and even if he did succeed in this and left the inn, he would be immediately seen by the fifth man, who, he guessed, had been left in the copse to keep watch on the front door. The staircase being given up, there remained only the window and the trap-door. By placing the chair upon the bed and mounting it he might manage to swing himself up through the trap-door; but it flashed upon him that if any mischief were intended the midnight visitors would certainly approach through the attic or loft above. He remembered passing, at the head of the stairs, a door which he had taken to be that of a cupboard; it might be the entrance to a stair leading to the loft, and if he tried that exit he would certainly be in an even worse trap.