“I gathered, then, that the one who sometimes lurked in the Jacobite hiding place and who, somehow, made the demon laughter, and the other phenomena, sought _one_ end. It was to cause you to leave Grange and to live in Friars House! Beyond so far, my science could not show me. I assisted, therefore, the project of the lurker; and came myself, too, in order to watch, my friend, to guard and to spy! “His gramophone I found, examined, and replaced. It had a clockwork attachment, very ingenious, which both started and stopped it; there was little or no scraping. To-night, from his room, unknown to him, I removed the instrument from its case, which lay hidden at the bottom of his trunk. Yes! I stole his key! I am the old fox! Why did he bring it here? I cannot reply. Perhaps he meant again to use it; his future projects are dark to me, but their object is all too light.” Sir James groaned. “Old Clem!” he whispered, “and how I trusted him!” “He did not quite believe in my science,” resumed Moris Klaw, “but he did not know that, hidden, I slept almost beside him as he sat, planning, in this very room! From his own bad mind I secured my second negative; and it showed me the death trap of some bad old son of Mother Church! At Grange there was but the Jacobite hiding place, but here was the devilry of feudal times! I returned to London. Why? To learn if my suspicions were well founded. Yes! You may or may not be aware; but if you die childless, the wicked Clement inherits Grange!” “I knew that,” whispered Sir James. “Ah! you knew? _So._ I returned to here, for, even at that time, I suspected that your _accidental_ death was the object of removal! Then I secured it, my second negative. Biding my time, I explored that death-smelling place. Its wicked machinery had been _freshly oiled!_ Ah! he knew its secrets well, the old house that he hoped to inherit! “One night, all innocent, as you sat here, with other guests, he would have blundered upon that doorway! And _you_, the host, would have led the search party! But I saw that he feared to move whilst I remained, and so I played the ghost upon him with his own spook!” Sir James Leyland looked up. His bronzed face was transformed with emotion. “Mr. Klaw,” he said, huskily, “why did you lay so much emphasis upon the words, ‘the seventh step’?” Moris Klaw shrugged, replying simply: “Because _there is no seventh step--only the mouth of a well!_” TENTH EPISODE. CASE OF THE VEIL OF ISIS I I have made no attempt, in these chronicles, to arrange the cases of my remarkable friend, Moris Klaw, in sections. Yet, as has recently been pointed out to me, they seem naturally to fall into two orders. There were those in which he appeared in the rôle of criminal investigator, and in which he was usually associated with Inspector Grimsby. There was another class of inquiry in which the criminal element was lacking: mysteries which never came under the notice of New Scotland Yard.