Captain Ducie rose from his unwonted position, and put down his candle on the table with a muttered oath. He was baffled at every turn. He felt ready to knock his head against the wall, so eaten up was he with inward rage and mortification. But it was the cunning of the serpent and not the rage of the lion that was needed in his case. He flung himself into a chair, and in a few minutes had cooled down sufficiently to consider what his next step ought to be. Was any other step possible to him? he asked himself. And then he answered himself with a lugubrious shake of the head. Only one thing remained to be tried, and that was the second door. It might be just as well to ascertain, if it were possible to do so, on what part of the house it opened. He had no recollection of having seen such a door in his perambulations about the interior of Bon Repos. The brown curtain that hung before the second door was only half drawn. Captain Ducie drew it impatiently on one side and inserted his pass-key into the lock. It turned without difficulty, but on trying to push open the door, he found that it stuck and did not readily give way. This fact, slight as it seemed, proved to the captain that the road to the hiding-place of the Diamond did not lie through that door. The door when opened revealed a narrow and gloomy corridor thickly carpeted with dust. One side of this corridor was formed by a bare unbroken wall. On the opposite side, at intervals of a few feet, were four doors, all now locked. There was yet another door at the end of the corridor opposite to that by which Ducie had entered. This last door was not merely locked but was further secured by some half-dozen large screws drawn through the inner side and wormed deep into the massive posts. When he had so far completed his examination, Captain Ducie turned to the four side doors. In the case of these also he found his pass-key available. Still carrying the light in his hand, he opened the first door and found himself in a gloomy and shuttered bedroom which had evidently not been occupied for a very long time. From this an inside door opened into a dressing-room, also shuttered and thick with dust. The second door in the corridor led also into this dressing-room. The third door in the corridor opened into another bedroom, and the fourth into its adjoining dressing-room. These two latter rooms, like the first two, had apparently not been entered for years.