"You need have no fear," the Baroness repeated. "The shutters are fast closed. You can look around on the scene of your former triumphs. The telephone wires have been cut. Nothing else has been altered." They stood facing one another, the man and the woman. From my point of vantage in the background, I was conscious of a subtle change in the Baroness. The cold stolidity, almost woodenness of her deportment, had gone. Her lips were parted a little, and there was something menacing in the gleam of her white teeth. Her eyes held expression, expression which I could not analyse. She seemed to bristle with sensation. The man who faced her had become uneasy. "We talk too much," he muttered. "It is enough for me that you have obeyed my orders and left all here untouched." "It is true," she acknowledged. "Searchers have almost wrecked this wing of the chateau and destroyed my grounds, in search of your spoil, but this bare little room--no! It seemed so harmless, so empty, and besides, there were many who shuddered to come near it." He busied himself once more with the wall. Suddenly he took a knife from his pocket and cut down a great strip of the wall paper. A little cry of triumph broke from his lips. His fingers seemed to feel a crack. He pushed and tugged till the sweat ran down his face. Finally, with a rumble, a sliding door opened to the extent of about a foot. He paused to gain breath and turned back to the Baroness with a leer of triumph. "Your treasure hunters were but simpletons," he scoffed. "They saw as far as the end of their noses." He seemed to become suddenly conscious that no one was looking at him. We were all staring at that gradually widening aperture in the wall, staring at the menacing figure which had unexpectedly appeared there. The man on whose behalf we had embarked upon this expedition swung abruptly around. His lips opened but no sound came. He stood shaking and choking. Mr. Thomson, wiping the dust from his clothes, stepped into the room. "Excellently timed," he said, nodding pleasantly at me. "Count----" The trapped man's recovery was amazing. I doubt whether Mr. Thomson, quick though he was, would have escaped the bullet from that suddenly upraised revolver, but for the Baroness. I have never before nor since looked upon anything so marvellous as her swift action. She struck his arm such a blow that we heard the cracking of the bone, caught him by the shoulders as though he had been a boy, flung him on to the floor, and was there with her hand upon his throat, and all the devils ever born of a woman's hatred glaring out of her face as she leaned over him. It took the three of us to drag her away while there was still a spark of life in the man. When at last we succeeded, he was unconscious, and the marks of her fingers were there, as though photographed on his throat. Mr. Thomson raised a whistle to his lips and blew it. "I think, perhaps," he remarked, "the police will be kinder."