The hall below was in darkness, but he felt rather than saw a figure on the stairway. Whether it was man or woman he could not say, and did not stop to discover. It might be one of the servants returning furtively--servants did not always stay away when they were bidden. “Flush” passed to the farther end of the corridor and from an angle in the wall watched. He saw nobody pass the head of the stairs, but there was no background. After a while he crept back again. There was nothing to be gained by forcing the door of Marl’s bedroom, even if it were possible. He had had time to inspect the house at his leisure, and he had already decided upon investigating the little safe in the library, for Mr. Marl’s own room had drawn blank. The “investigation,” which took two hours and the employment of one of the best sets of tools in the profession, was not unprofitable. But it did not reveal the huge sum of money which he anticipated. He hesitated. The night was too far through to make an attempt on the bedroom, even if he had not already searched it from wall to wall. He folded his kit and slipped it into one pocket, his loot into another, and went upstairs again. There was no sound from Marl’s room, but the light was still on. He tried to look through the keyhole, but the key was still there. The only inducement there was for him to enter the room was the possibility that the money was in the man’s clothes. This likelihood was remote, he thought. Possibly Marl had taken it to some safe deposit--a contingency which Barnet had foreseen. He went slowly down the stairs, through the hall and the butler’s pantry to the side door, where he had left his boots, his overcoat and his shiny silk hat, for he was in evening dress. Then he stole softly forth along the covered passage-way running by the side of the house. Here a door opened into the little forecourt of Marl’s house. He reached the garden and his hand was on the gate when somebody touched him and he spun round. “I want you ‘Flush,’” said a well-remembered voice. “Inspector Parr. You may remember me?” “Parr!” gasped the bewildered Barnet, and with an oath wrenched himself free and leapt through the gate, but the three policemen who were waiting for him were not so easy to dispose of, and they marched “Flush” Barnet to the nearest police station, a worried man. In the meantime Parr conducted a search of his own. Accompanied by a detective he made his way to the hall of the house and up the stairs. “This is the only room occupied apparently,” he said, and knocked at the door. There was no reply. “Go along and see if you can rouse any of the servants,” said Parr. The man came back with the startling information that there were no servants in the house. “There’s somebody here,” said the old inspector, and flashing his lamp along the corridor he saw the table, and with an agility remarkable in one of his age, he leapt up and peered through the ventilator.