Joseph was still coming and going with his sieve--now that Neale saw him at a few yards distance he saw that the junior partner and amateur experimenter was evidently cleaning out his furnace. The place into which he threw the ashes was at the far end of the garden; at least three minutes was occupied in each journey. And--yielding to a sudden impulse--when Joseph made his next excursion and had his back fairly turned, Neale crossed the lawn in half a dozen agile and stealthy strides, and within a few seconds had slipped within the open door and behind it. A moment later, and he knew he was trapped. Joseph came back--and did not enter. Neale heard him fling the sieve on the gravel. Then the door was pulled to with a metallic bang, from without, and the same action which closed it also cut off the electric light. CHAPTER XXVIII SOUND-PROOF It needed no more than a moment's reflection to prove to Neale that he had made a serious mistake in obeying that first impulse. Joseph Chestermarke had gone away--probably for the night. And there had been something in the metallic clang of that closing door, something in the sure and certain fashion in which it had closed into its frame, something in the utter silence which had followed the sudden extinction of the light, which made the captive feel that he might beat upon door or wall as hard and as long as he pleased without attracting any attention. This place into which he had come of his own free will was no ordinary place--already he felt that he was in a trap out of which it was not going to be easy to escape. He stood for a moment, heart thumping and pulses throbbing, to listen and to look. But he saw nothing--beyond the faint indication of the waning moonlight outside the red-curtained, circular windows high above him, and a fainter speck of glowing cinder, left behind in the recently emptied furnace. He heard nothing, either, save a very faint crackling of the expiring ashes in that furnace. Presently even that minute sound died down, the one speck of light went out, and the silence and gloom were intense. Neale now knew that unless Joseph Chestermarke came back to his workshop he was doomed to spend the night in it--and possibly part of the next day. He felt sure that it was impossible to obtain release otherwise than by Joseph's coming. He could do nothing--in all probability--to release himself. No one in the town would have the remotest idea that he was fastened up within those walls. The only man to whom such an idea could come on hearing that he, Neale, was missing, was old Rob Walford--and Walford, by that time, would be well on his way to Wymington, thirty miles off, and as he was to be there all night, and all next day, he would hear nothing until his return to Scarnham, twenty-four hours hence. No!--he was caught. Joseph Chestermarke had had no idea of catching him--but he had caught him all the same.