At an early hour next morning, in fact long before M. Platzoff was out of bed, Captain Ducie, cigar in hand, took a ramble round the exterior of Bon Repos. While exploring the four rooms on the preceding evening he was struck with the recollection of having on one occasion seen their shuttered windows from the outside. A day or two after his arrival at Bon Repos he had gone on an exploring expedition about the grounds, and it was on that occasion that he had seen them. He had taken them as ordinary unused chambers, and had had no further curiosity respecting them. He remembered now that they looked--or would have looked if their shutters had been open--into a very thick bit of shrubbery, so dense, in fact, as to be all but impenetrable, and looking as if it had not been pruned for years. And yet this very bit of shrubbery was within a few feet of the delicious little flower-studded lawn on to which the windows of Platzoff's private rooms opened; indeed, the four shut-up rooms were merely a continuation of the same wing in which the private rooms were situate. It was evident that since the four rooms had been disused the shrubbery outside them had been allowed to grow as thick and wild as it chose, as though it were Platzoff's wish to screen them as much as possible from observation. Captain Ducie having pierced this shrubbery, found himself within sight of the four windows, and saw that he had not been mistaken as to their position. Through the dusty panes of the last window of the four he could just make out the knotted cord as he had left it over night. He took a few quiet observations, unseen by any one, and then went back indoors.