"I will, my dear. My feelings for you well you must know, but this is not the time. Look here at this stain, and this, and this. The spectre cat has been up these stairs. Puss, puss, puss, puss! Not likely that it'll answer; it's got the cunning of a fox. That's Mr. Felix's room, if my eyes don't deceive me." "Yes, it is." "But it don't look the same door as the one I have been through; it ain't the first time I've been here, you know. Where's the keyhole? I'll take my oath there was a keyhole when I last saw the door." "The key 'ole's 'id. That brass plate covers it; it's a patent spring, and he fixes it some'ow from the inside; he presses something, and it slides down; then he turns a screw, and makes it tight." "Can anyone do it but him?" "I don't think they can; it's 'is own idea, he ses." "See how we're getting on, Wigg. No one can work that brass plate but him; that shows he's at home." He knocked at the door, and called "Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix!" "He'll give me notice to leave," said Mrs. Middlemore, "I'm sure he will. He's the last man in the world to be broke in upon like this." "Leave it to me, my dear," said Constable Nightingale, "I'll make it all right with him. What did he say to me when I was on this beat? I told you, you remember, Wigg. 'Constable,' says he, 'you're on night duty here.' 'Yes, sir,' I answers. 'Very good,' says he, 'I live in this house, and I always make it a point to look after them as looks after me.' That was a straight tip, and I'm looking after him now. Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix!" But though he called again and again, and rapped at the door twenty times, he received no answer from within the room. "It's singular," he said, knitting his brows. "He must be a sound sleeper, must Mr. Felix. I'll try again." He continued to knock and call "loud enough," as he declared, "to rouse the dead," but no response came to the anxious little group on the landing. "There's not only no keyhole," said Constable Nightingale, "but there's no handle to take hold of. The door's for all the world like a safe without a knob. Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix! Don't you hear us, sir? I've got something particular to say to you." For all the effect he produced he might have spoken to a stone wall, and he and Constable Wigg and Mrs. Middlemore stood looking helplessly at each other. "I tell you what it is," he said, tightening his belt, "this has got beyond a joke. What with the silence, and the bloodstains, and the man with the red handkercher round his neck as run out of the house while Wigg and me was talking together outside, there's more in this than meets the eye. Now, Mrs. Middlemore, there's no occasion for us to speak low any more; it's wearing to the throat. Have you got any doubt at all that the brass plate there couldn't be fixed as it is unless somebody was inside the room?" "I'm certain of it, Mr. Nightingale, I'm certain of it."