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Page 133
"Surely the gate was open!" ejaculated Phelps.
"Yes, but I have a peculiar taste in these matters. I
chose the place where the three fir-trees stand, and
behind their screen I got over without the least
chance of any one in the house being able to see me.
I crouched down among the bushes on the other side,
and crawled from one to the other--witness the
disreputable state of my trouser knees--until I had
reached the clump of rhododendrons just opposite to
your bedroom window. There I squatted down and
awaited developments.
"The blind was not down in your room, and I could see
Miss Harrison sitting there reading by the table. It
was quarter-past ten when she closed her book,
fastened the shutters, and retired.
"I heard her shut the door, and felt quite sure that
she had turned the key in the lock."
"The key!" ejaculated Phelps.
"Yes; I had given Miss Harrison instructions to lock
the door on the outside and take the key with her when
she went to bed. She carried out every one of my
injunctions to the letter, and certainly without her
cooperation you would not have that paper in you
coat-pocket. She departed then and the lights went
out, and I was left squatting in the
rhododendron-bush.
"The night was fine, but still it was a very weary
vigil. Of course it has the sort of excitement about
it that the sportsman feels when he lies beside the
water-course and waits for the big game. It was very
long, though--almost as long, Watson, as when you and
I waited in that deadly room when we looked into the
little problem of the Speckled Band. There was a
church-clock down at Woking which struck the quarters,
and I thought more than once that it had stopped. At
last however about two in the morning, I suddenly
heard the gentle sound of a bolt being pushed back and
the creaking of a key. A moment later the servants'
door was opened, and Mr. Joseph Harrison stepped out
into the moonlight."
"Joseph!" ejaculated Phelps.
"He was bare-headed, but he had a black coat thrown
over his shoulder so that he could conceal his face in
an instant if there were any alarm. He walked on
tiptoe under the shadow of the wall, and when he
reached the window he worked a long-bladed knife
through the sash and pushed back the catch. Then he
flung open the window, and putting his knife through
the crack in the shutters, he thrust the bar up and
swung them open.
"From where I lay I had a perfect view of the inside
of the room and of every one of his movements. He lit
the two candles which stood upon the mantelpiece, and
then he proceeded to turn back the corner of the
carpet in the neighborhood of the door. Presently he
stopped and picked out a square piece of board, such
as is usually left to enable plumbers to get at the
joints of the gas-pipes. This one covered, as a
matter of fact, the T joint which gives off the pipe
which supplies the kitchen underneath. Out of this
hiding-place he drew that little cylinder of paper,
pushed down the board, rearranged the carpet, blew out
the candles, and walked straight into my arms as I
stood waiting for him outside the window.
"Well, he has rather more viciousness than I gave him
credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his
knife, and I had to grasp him twice, and got a cut
over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him.
He looked murder out of the only eye he could see with
when we had finished, but he listened to reason and
gave up the papers. Having got them I let my man go,
but I wired full particulars to Forbes this morning.
If he is quick enough to catch his bird, well and good.
But if, as I shrewdly suspect, he finds the nest empty
before he gets there, why, all the better for the
government. I fancy that Lord Holdhurst for one, and
Mr. Percy Phelps for another, would very much rather
that the affair never got as far as a police-court.
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