After all, we need not have troubled ourselves with scruples. Creslin had made his own plans and made them with devilish cunning. At midnight, as we had seen nothing of him, I sent down an enquiry and was told that he had come in quite exhausted and gone at once to his room. To Leonard and me the news sounded natural enough. Rose's instinct, however, was not to be denied. "I know that he meant what he said about to-night," she assured us uneasily. "Swear that you will be near, Maurice." We promised, and soon afterwards she retired. Her bedroom adjoined the sitting room, and after she had passed through the connecting door we heard the click of the turning key on the other side. The outside door, opening upon the corridor, was secured by a bolt. It certainly seemed as though she could have no cause for fear. Leonard and I, however, took up our vigil behind a black lacquer screen at the farther end of the room. We heard the slow dying away of the footsteps upon the pavement below, the lessening scream of the electric cars, and finally silence. One o'clock struck, and half-past. We had both of us given up the idea that anything was likely to happen, when the door of the sitting room was quietly opened, and Creslin, in his dressing gown and slippers, entered. He stood listening for a moment, as though to make sure that he had not been followed. Then he turned on the electric light, drew a key from his pocket--a new, shining key--rubbed it with a little oil, and stole across the room towards the door which led into Rose's apartment. He essayed no knock, no whispered invitation. He fitted the key noiselessly into the lock, turned it softly and disappeared. In five seconds we heard the sound of her muffled cry. In ten we had dragged him out into the sitting room. He lay on the carpet, looking at us with frightened eyes, and that expression upon his face which had so often puzzled me now made clear. The man was a coward. "What are you going to do?" he whimpered. "Horsewhip you first," I told him, "and afterwards punish you. I shouldn't call out, if I were you," I added, as he opened his lips. "There's the skeleton key still in the door there, and the hotel is full of journalists. Better make up your mind to go through with it." "If you do me an injury," he cried, "the people to-morrow will tear you limb from limb." "Get up," I ordered roughly. "We're taking our chance about that." * * * * * Mr. Thomson presided over our usual banquet, a few evenings later, in the dining room of a suite at the Ritz. He was a little gaunt and pale, but otherwise showed few signs of his indisposition. By the side of the plate of each one of us was an envelope, which he begged us not to open until the end of the festivities.