The Doctor, once more the physician, knelt at her side and felt for her pulse. And Lizzie, picking herself up from where the collision with some violent body had thrown her, retrieved the smelling salts from the floor. It was onto this picture, the candlelight shining on strained faces, the dramatic figure of Dale, now semi-conscious, the desperate rage of Bailey, that a new actor appeared on the scene. Anderson, the detective, stood in the doorway, holding a candle—as grim and menacing a figure as a man just arisen from the dead. “That’s right!” said Lizzie, unappalled for once. “Come in when everything’s over!” The Doctor glanced up and met the detective’s eyes, cold and menacing. “You took my revolver from me downstairs,” he said. “I’ll trouble you for it.” The Doctor got heavily to his feet. The others, their suspicions confirmed at last, looked at him with startled eyes. The detective seemed to enjoy the universal confusion his words had brought. Slowly, with sullen reluctance, the Doctor yielded up the stolen weapon. The detective examined it casually and replaced it in his hip pocket. “I’ve something to settle with you pretty soon,” he said through clenched teeth, addressing the Doctor. “And I’ll settle it properly. Now—what’s this?” He indicated Dale—her face still and waxen—her breath coming so faintly she seemed hardly to breathe at all as Miss Cornelia and Bailey tried to revive her. “She’s coming to—” said Miss Cornelia triumphantly, as a first faint flush of color reappeared in the girl’s cheeks. “We found her shut in there, Mr. Anderson,” the spinster added, pointing toward the gaping entrance of the Hidden Room. A gleam crossed the detective’s face. He went up to examine the secret chamber. As he did so, Doctor Wells, who had been inching surreptitiously toward the door, sought the opportunity of slipping out unobserved. But Anderson was not to be caught napping again. “Wells!” he barked. The Doctor stopped and turned. “Where were you when she was locked in this room?” The Doctor’s eyes sought the floor—the walls—wildly—for any possible loophole of escape. “I didn’t shut her in if that’s what you mean!” he said defiantly. “There was _someone_ shut in there with her!” He gestured at the Hidden Room. “Ask these people here.” Miss Cornelia caught him up at once. “The fact remains, Doctor,” she said, her voice cold with anger, “that we left her here alone. When we came back you were here. The corridor door was locked, and she was in that room—unconscious!” She moved forward to throw the light of her candle on the Hidden Room as the detective passed into it, gave it a swift professional glance, and stepped out again. But she had not finished her story by any means. “As we opened that door,” she continued to the detective, tapping the false mantel, “the Doctor deliberately extinguished our only candle!” “Do you know who was in that room?” queried the detective fiercely, wheeling on the Doctor.