The clock chimed one, and he heeded it not. Two--half-past--. Of a sudden he sat bolt upright, then got noiselessly to his feet and glided across the floor to where his bed stood--a monstrous black object with heavy canopy and curtains, a relic of the Victorianism in which this house was born. He moved like a cat, absolutely without sound, fleet, sure. His fingers found the coverlet and he tore it down, tumbling the clothes and pushing down the pillow so that it looked as if he himself lay there, peacefully sleeping beneath the sheltering blankets.... Then, still noiseless, panther-like, he slid his lithe figure under the bed.... Then the noise came again. Just the whisper of footsteps in the wide hall, and then--his door opened soundlessly and for a moment the footsteps stopped. He could feel a presence in the room. If it were Dollops the lad would give some sign. If not--He lay still, scarcely breathing in the enveloping darkness. The footsteps came again, softly, softly padding across the room toward him. He saw the black shadows of stockinged feet as they crossed the path of moonlight, and sucked in his breath. Man's feet!... Whose?... Then something shook the bedstead with tremendous force, but without sound. It was as if some object had been hurled forcibly into its softness. The footsteps turned again, hurriedly this time, and there was a sound of a deep-drawn breath--a breath full of pent-up, passionate hatred. Then the figure ran lightly across the room, and as it flashed for a moment through the bar of moonlight, Cleek looked out from his safe hiding-place and--_saw_! The eyes were narrowed in the ivory-tinted face, the jaw heavy and undershot as a bull-dog's, while a dark coloured mustache straggled untidily across the upper lip. The moonlight, cruelly clear, picked out the point of something sharp that shone in one clenched hand, something that looked like a knife--that _was_ a knife. Then the figure vanished and the door closed noiselessly behind him. Hmm. So this question of the Frozen Flame was as urgent as all that, was it? To attempt to murder him, here--in the house of the Squire of Fetchworth. He wriggled out of his hiding place, a little stiff from the cramped position he had held, and guardedly lit his candle. Then he surveyed the bed with set mouth and narrowed eyes. There was a sharp incision through the clothes, an incision quite three inches long, that had punctured the pillow which lay beneath them--the pillow that had saved him his life--and buried itself in the mattress beneath. Gad! a powerful hand that! He stood a moment thinking, pinching up his chin the while. He had had his suspicions of Borkins, but the face that he had seen in the moonlight was not the butler's face. _Whose, then, was it?_ CHAPTER XIII A GRUESOME DISCOVERY