“We’d better go down,” said the doctor at last.

“D’you think so?  But the noise has stopped, and, after all, it is no business of ours.”

Dr. Panton did not tell the other what was really in his mind.  This was that the man who had now become so curiously quiet might unwittingly have done a mischief to himself.  All he said was:  “I have a feeling that I ought to go down, at any rate.”

The words had hardly left his lips before the noises began again, and, of course, from where the two men were now, they sounded far louder than they had done from the doctor’s bed-room.  Heavy furniture was undoubtedly being thrown about, and again there came those curious crashes, as if plates and dishes were being dashed against the wall and broken there in a thousand pieces.

“I say, this won’t do!” Quickly he went towards the door, and as he reached the corridor he saw the swing door between the two parts of the house open, and Miss Farrow came through, looking her well-bred, composed self, and wearing, incidentally, a short, neat, becoming dressing-gown.

“I can’t think what’s happening!” she exclaimed.  She looked from the one man to the other.  “What can be happening downstairs?”

As Panton made no answer, Mr. Tapster replied for them both:  “The doctor thinks one of the servants got drunk last night.”

“Yes, that must be it, of course.  I’ll go down and see who it is,” she said composedly.

But Dr. Panton broke in authoritatively:  “No, indeed, Miss Farrow!  If it’s what I think it is, the fellow will probably be violent.  You’d better let me go down alone and deal with him.”

There had come again that extraordinary, sudden stillness.

“I think I’d rather come down with you,” she said coolly.

All three started going down the narrow, steep wooden staircase which connected that portion of the upper floor with the many rambling offices of the old house.

Tapster and Blanche Farrow each held a candle, but Dr. Panton led the way; and soon they were treading the whitewashed passages, even their slippered feet making, in the now absolute stillness, what sounded like loud thuds on the stone floor.

“Listen!” said Blanche suddenly.

They all stood still, and there came a strange fluttering sound.  It was as if a bird had got in through a window, and was trying to find a way out.

“D’you know the way to the kitchen?  I think that the man must be in the kitchen, or probably the pantry,” whispered the doctor to his hostess.

“I think it’s this way.”

Miss Farrow led them down a short passage to the right, and cautiously opened a door which led into the kitchen.

And then they all three uttered exclamations of amazement and of horror.  Holding her candle high in her hand, their hostess was now lighting up a scene of extraordinary and of widespread disorder.