The
darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired
again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly
over his head. At last his hands touched the portiere. He hesitated,
listened, and put one hand under the portiere. Then, relighting the
lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portiere, and
clutched for the unseen intelligence.
But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right
lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the _cabinet de
toilette_, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In
front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants'
quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily.
CHAPTER XVII
POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN
Then it was that he heard a noise, something between scratching and
fumbling, on the further side of the front-door, in the main corridor of
the flats. He could see through the ground glass over the door that the
corridor was lighted as usual.
He thought: 'Someone is breaking the seal on that door!' And his next
idea was: 'Since the seal is being broken in the full light of the
public corridor, it is being broken by someone who has the right to
break it. Only one man has the right, and that man is Francis Tudor's
executor, Senior Polycarp.
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