“I know it.  I told you so from the beginning, Headland,” he answered, with a sort of wail.  “But what’s that got to do with drugging the whiskey?”

“Everything.  I’m going to find out to-night whether Captain Travers is that somebody or not.  Sh-h-h!  Don’t get excited.  Yes, that’s my game.  I want to get into his rooms whilst he is sleeping, and be free to search his effects.  I want to get into every man’s room here, and wherever I find poison—­well, you understand?”

“Yes,” he replied, brightening as he grasped the import of the matter.  “What a ripping idea!  And so simple.”

“I think so.  Once let me find the poison, and I’ll know my man.  Now one other thing:  the housekeeper must have a master-key that opens all the bedrooms in the place.  Get it for me.  It will be easier and swifter than picking the locks.”

“Right you are, old chap.  I’ll slip up to Mrs. Jarret’s room and fetch it to you at once.”

“No; tuck it under the mat just outside my door.  As it won’t do for me to be drugged as well as the rest of you.  I shan’t put in an appearance when the rest come down.  Say I’ve got a headache, and have gone to bed.  As for my own ’night-cap’—­well, I can send Dollops down to get the butler to pour me one out of another decanter, so that will be all right.  Now, toddle off and get the key, there’s a good chap.  And, I say, Bawdrey, as I shan’t see you again until morning—­good-night.”

“Good-night, old chap!” he answered in his impulsive, boyish way.  “You are a friend, Headland.  And—­you’ll save my dad, God bless you!  A true, true friend—­that’s what you are.  Thank God I ran across you.”

Cleek smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away; then, hearing the other gentlemen coming down the stairs, he, too, made haste to get out of the room and to creep up to his own after they had assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody’s victim.

* * * * *

The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound save that which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleek’s room swung quietly open, and Cleek himself, in dressing-gown and wadded bedroom slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving Dollops on guard, passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet.

The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of Philip Bawdrey himself, opened upon this.  He went to each in turn, unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom candle.

The sleeping-draught had accomplished all that was required of it; and in each and every room he entered—­Captain Travers’s, Lieutenant Forshay’s, Mr. Robert Murdock’s—­there lay the occupant thereof stretched out at full length in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep which comes of drugs.