‘No; I’ll tackle the bedroom.’

And he seized the handle of the bedroom door.  At the first trial it would not turn, but in a moment it turned a little, and then turned back against his pressure.

‘Someone’s got hold of it inside!’ he said to himself.

He put the lamp on a chair, and took the revolver from his pocket in readiness for any complications that might follow his forcing of the door.

Then he heard a woman’s voice within the bedroom.

’I shall open it, Alb, if you kill me for it.  I don’t care who it is.  You may be dying of loss of blood.  In fact, I’m sure you are.’

And the door was pulled wide open with a single sweeping movement, and Hugo beheld the figure, slightly dishevelled and more than slightly perturbed, of Mrs. Albert Shawn.

‘Oh, Alb!’ cried Lily.  ’It’s Mr. Hugo!  Oh, Mr. Hugo! whatever next will happen in this world?’

The swift loosing of the tension of Hugo’s nerves was too much for his self-possession.  He burst into a peal of loud laughter.  It was unnaturally loud, it was hysterical; but it was genuine laughter, and it did him good.

Lily straightened herself.  So far, she had not admitted Hugo into the chamber.

‘It’s all very well for you to laugh like that, Mr. Hugo,’ she protested sharply; ’but perhaps you don’t know that you’ve nearly killed my husband with that there revolver.  The shot came through the door, and took him in the arm just as he was emptying this safe.’

Hugo saw Albert Shawn lying on the stripped bed, a handkerchief tied round his arm, and in the corner near the door a large safe opened, and its contents in a heap on the floor.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Albert; ’come in.  I’m nowhere near croaking.  I didn’t know you were on this lay as well as me, sir.  I thought I was going to come down on you to-morrow with a surprise like a thousand of bricks.’

‘What lay, Albert?’ asked Hugo, advancing into the room.

‘The secret-finding lay, sir,’ said Albert.

‘Your wife has the right to be anxious about you,’ Hugo observed, after a pause.  ’But you don’t seem to be quite dying, Shawn; and I think it will be as well if you explain to me why you have adopted the profession of burglar.  It is extremely singular that there should have been three burglars here to-night.  You, and then me—­’

‘What did I tell you, Alb?’ Mrs. Albert Shawn exclaimed.  ’Didn’t I tell you I heard a scuffle?’

’The scuffle was between me and No. 3.  And be it known to you, Mrs. Shawn, that the revolver was not fired by me, but by No. 3.  I took it off him, afterwards.’

‘Then No. 3 must have come on behalf of Mr. Ravengar, sir,’ said Albert.

‘You are no doubt right,’ Hugo agreed.  ‘But how did you know that?’

’Hawke’s Detective Agency, sir.  I found out before my wedding that one of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him.  I spun him a yarn how I’d been with Hawke’s once, and they gave me the bag, and I wasn’t satisfied, and he’d got a lot of grievances against Hawke’s, too, he had.  We got very friendly.  Pity I had to leave the thing for my wedding.  But I came back after a week.’