each tied, sealed, and inscribed.  Holmes picked one out, but it was as hard to read by the flickering fire, and he drew out his little dark lantern, for it was too dangerous, with Milverton in the next room, to switch on the electric light.  Suddenly I saw him halt, listen intently, and then in an instant he had swung the door of the safe to, picked up his coat, stuffed his tools into the pockets, and darted behind the window curtain, motioning me to do the same.

It was only when I had joined him there that I heard what had alarmed his quicker senses.  There was a noise somewhere within the house.  A door slammed in the distance.  Then a confused, dull murmur broke itself into the measured thud of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching.  They were in the passage outside the room.  They paused at the door.  The door opened.  There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on.  The door closed once more, and the pungent reek of a strong cigar was borne to our nostrils.  Then the footsteps continued backward and forward, backward and forward, within a few yards of us.  Finally there was a creak from a chair, and the footsteps ceased.  Then a key clicked in a lock, and I heard the rustle of papers.

So far I had not dared to look out, but now I gently parted the division of the curtains in front of me and peeped through.  From the pressure of Holmes’s shoulder against mine, I knew that he was sharing my observations.  Right in front of us, and almost within our reach, was the broad, rounded back of Milverton.  It was evident that we had entirely miscalculated his movements, that he had never been to his bedroom, but that he had been sitting up in some smoking or billiard room in the farther wing of the house, the windows of which we had not seen.  His broad, grizzled head, with its shining patch of baldness, was in the immediate foreground of our vision.  He was leaning far back in the red leather chair, his legs outstretched, a long, black cigar projecting at an angle from his mouth.  He wore a semi-military smoking jacket, claret-coloured, with a black velvet collar.  In his hand he held a long, legal document which he was reading in an indolent fashion, blowing rings of tobacco smoke from his lips as he did so.  There was no promise of a speedy departure in his composed bearing and his comfortable attitude.

I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers, and that he was easy in his mind.  I was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it.  In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out, throw my great coat over his head, pinion him, and leave the rest to Holmes.  But Milverton never looked up.  He was languidly interested by the papers in his hand, and page after page was turned as he followed the argument of the lawyer.  At least, I thought, when he has finished the document and the cigar he will go to his room, but before he had reached the end of either, there came a remarkable development, which turned our thoughts into quite another channel.