One arm was stretched through the broken window towards the conservatory door, which he was trying to unlock; but seeing that someone was approaching he withdrew his arm hurriedly, and the white face that had been peering through the jagged hole in the window-pane disappeared. The next instant I was at the conservatory door, all agog to unfasten it and to give chase, when suddenly, from every part of the building, came the ringing of alarm bells, and, with a sharp click, a bolt upon the conservatory door slid into its place. Clearly Miss Clara had pressed the button of the burglar alarm, thus locking the very door to which my hand was then stretched, and so effectually shutting me in, and a possible housebreaker out. With one twist of my fist I turned the key to which the Dumpling had been directing his attention. Then I tried to slide back the only remaining fastening--the bolt which had been shot into its place by the burglar alarm. It held fast, and cursing Miss Clara, her inventful brother, and his too ingenious burglar box, I tugged at the door with all my strength, but to no purpose. The thing would not budge an inch, and when I snatched up a piece of rockwork from a fernery and bashed desperately at the hateful bolt, I only made matters worse. So far from loosening, the bolt seemed only to set its teeth, bulldogwise, the more tenaciously for my blows. Grinning with rage, and with the strain of concentrating all the strength of my body into my two fists, I threw down the rockwork, with a word I hesitate to repeat, but which Metcalfe, upon whose foot the piece of rockwork fell, had no hesitation in forcibly repeating, what time he limped upon one leg around the conservatory with a grin of pain upon his face more beautiful to behold than the grin which had so recently been upon mine. For the present it was clear that, thanks to Miss Clara and the invention of her resourceful brother, the quarry had escaped me. Long before I could have knocked out sufficient glass to crawl through the conservatory window, long before Miss Clara could have reversed the action of the machine and so released the lock upon the door, the Dumpling would be far away. [Illustration: "THERE PEERED THROUGH A BROKEN PANE OF GLASS ... THE WHITE AND WICKED FACE OF THE DUMPLING."] Under the circumstances I thought it wise to put the best face I could upon my defeat, delicately hinting at the same time to Metcalfe that I should be personally obliged if he would make it convenient to do the same upon his pain, since much as one might admire a stone gargoyle which bore a resemblance to a human face, a human face which bore a striking likeness to a stone gargoyle in pain was less admirable and more alarming. "And now," I said, "we'll return to the drawing-room and to Miss Clara, and get her to open the conservatory door so that we can search the garden without delay."