Mr. Milsey, thus adjured, went out on the balcony with his little case and was duly locked out. Within two minutes he opened the door and stepped in with a satisfied grin. "Easy as winking!" said Mr. Milsey. "It's what you might call one of your penny plain locks, this--and t'other'll be like it. No difficulty about this job, anyway." "Then we'll get to work," said Davidge. "Mr. Triffitt, I can't ask you to come with us, because that wouldn't be according to etiquette. Sit you down and read your book and smoke your pipe and drink your drop--and maybe we'll have something to tell you when our job's through." "You've no fear of interruption?" asked Triffitt, who would vastly have preferred action to inaction. "Supposing--you know how things do and will turn out sometimes--supposing he came back?" Davidge shook his head and smiled grimly and knowingly. "No," he said. "He'll not come back--at least, if he did, we should be well warned. I've more than one man at work on this job, Mr. Triffitt, and if his lordship changed the course of his arrangements and returned this way, one of my chaps would keep him in conversation while another hurried up here to give us the office by a few taps on the outer door. No!--we're safe enough. Sit you down and don't bother about us. Come on, Jim--we'll get to it." Triffitt tried to follow the detective's advice--he was just then deep in a French novel of the high-crime order, and he picked it up when the two men had gone out on the balcony and endeavoured to get interested in it. But he speedily discovered that the unravelling of crime on paper was nothing like so fascinating as the actual participation in detection of crime in real life, and he threw the book aside and gave himself up to waiting. What were those two doing in Burchill's rooms? What were they finding? What would the result be? Certainly Davidge and his man took their time. Eight o'clock came and went--nine o'clock, ten o'clock followed and sped into the past, and they were still there. It was drawing near to eleven, and they had been in those rooms well over three hours, when a slight sound came at Triffitt's window and Davidge put his head in, to be presently followed by Milsey. Milsey looked as innocent as ever, but it seemed to Triffitt that Davidge looked grave. "Well?" said Triffitt. "Any luck?" Davidge drew the curtains over the balcony window before he turned and answered this question.