He pulled back the curtain, so that the hall was lighted to some extent from the open doorway, and then passed through, I after him.  The hall was a broad one, running right through the centre of the house from front to rear.  Godfrey proceeded cautiously and yet rapidly the whole length of it, flashing his torch into every room.  They were all luxuriously furnished, but were empty of human occupants.  From the kitchen, which closed the hall at the rear, a flight of stone steps led down into the basement, and Godfrey descended these with a steadiness I could not but admire.  We found ourselves in a square, stone-flagged room, evidently used as a laundry.  Two doors opened out of it, but both were secured with heavy padlocks.

“Store-rooms or wine-cellars, perhaps,” Godfrey ventured, mounted the stairs again to the kitchen, and returned to the room whence we had started.

Everything there was as we had left it.  The dead man sat huddled forward in his chair; Swain was still on his knees beside the couch; the girl had not stirred.  Godfrey went to the side of the couch, and, disregarding Swain’s fierce glance, again placed his fingers lightly on the girl’s left temple.  Then he came back to me.

“If she doesn’t revive pretty soon,” he said, “we’ll have to try heroic measures.  But there must be somebody in the house.  Let’s look upstairs.”

He led the way up the broad stairs, which rose midway of the hall, sending a long ray of light ahead of him.  I followed in no very happy frame of mind, for I confess that this midnight exploration of an unknown house, with a murdered man for its only occupant, was getting on my nerves.  But Godfrey proceeded calmly and systematically.

The hall above corresponded to that below, with two doors on each side, opening into bedroom suites.  The first was probably that of the master of the house.  It consisted of bedroom, bath and dressing-room, but there was no one there.  The next was evidently Miss Vaughan’s.  It also had a bath and a daintily-furnished boudoir; but these, too, were empty.

Then, as we opened the door across the hall, a strange odour saluted us—­an odour suggestive somehow of the East—­which, in the first moment, caught the breath from the throat, and in the second seemed to muffle and retard the beating of the heart.

A flash of Godfrey’s torch showed that we were in a little entry, closed at the farther end by a heavy drapery.  Godfrey strode forward and swept the drapery aside.  The rush of perfume was over-powering, and through the opening came a soft glow of light.

It was a moment before I got my breath; then a mist seemed to fall from before my eyes and a strange sense of exaltation and well-being stole through me.  I saw Godfrey standing motionless, transfixed, with one hand holding back the drapery, and his torch hanging unused in the other, and I crept forward and peered over his shoulder at the strangest scene I have ever gazed upon.