The two old cronies relapsed into a thoughtful silence, neither of them showing a disposition to retire for the night, though the intense stillness prevailing in the great house implied that everyone else was asleep. Yet it was not so, for Alec Forsyth was at that moment uncommonly busy before the looking-glass in his bedroom. On the toilet-table there lay open a theatrical "make-up" box, from which he was putting the finishing touches to a very creditable transformation of himself into a semblance of the Duke. His deft usage of the various pigments revealed him as no tyro at the task, for which, indeed, his proficiency as an amateur actor had inspired the idea. "That will do, I think," he said to himself after a final survey. "It is a good thing that the scene is to be played without limelight effects; but it is my voice that will give me away if anything does." He rose and crossed the room once or twice, copying Beaumanoir’s slight limp to the life. Then, having consulted his watch, he took from his pocket-book a letter, addressed to the man he was about to personate, and refreshed his memory. "I congratulate you on this return to your senses," the writer began. "My agents inform me that the gentleman in whom we are interested is expected to stay at Prior’s Tarrant as your guest on arrival, being due on Tuesday. On Tuesday night you will leave unfastened the door leading into the crypt from the Dutch garden, so that I and my assistants may obtain access secretly. You will come down into the crypt an hour after midnight, when I will hand you the documents for substitution. Do not fail to make your arrangements so that the exchange may be effected without a hitch, and as rapidly as possible. As host you should have no difficulty in inspiring the necessary confidence to put the business through, and you will then be troubled no further by us.—C. Z." "Poor old Beau! He’s played up as well as if we had told him all about our plan," Forsyth muttered as he replaced the letter and took another look at himself in the glass. "I trust they won’t call me ’your Grace,’ and make me laugh." But it was in no laughing mood that he switched off the electric light, listened at the door for fully a minute, and then softly opened it. His room, as it had been in the London house, was next to that of the Duke, and, satisfied that there was no one in the corridor, he slid out softly and shut the door behind him. A few natural steps having brought him opposite the Duke’s room, he fell at once into Beaumanoir’s limp, and so continued his way to the head of a secondary staircase that led down to the service rooms on the ground floor.