For want of anything better he picked up the heavy glass inkpot standing on the table, emptied the contents in a puddle on the floor, and held the inkpot itself ready in his hand.

He listened intently, but heard no sound—­no sound at all in the whole house, and this increased his apprehensions, for he knew well that Deede Dawson was a man always the most dangerous when most silent.

It was possible of course that he had fled, but not likely.  He would not go, Rupert thought, till he had made his preparations and not without a last effort to take revenge on those who had defeated him and in this dramatic way turned the mate he had expected to secure into a win for his opponent.

Still Rupert listened intently, straining his ears to catch the least sound to hint to him where his enemy was, for he knew that if he failed to discover him his first intimation of his proximity might well come in the shape of the white-hot sting of a bullet, rending flesh and bone.

Then, too, where was Ella, and where was her mother?

There was something inexpressibly sinister in the utter quietness of the house, a quietness not at all of peace and rest but of a brooding, angry threat.

Still he could hear nothing, and he left the room, very quickly and noiselessly, and he made sure there was no one anywhere in any of these rooms on the ground floor.

He locked the front door and the back to make sure no one should enter or leave too easily, and returned on tiptoe, moving to and fro like a shadow cast by a changing light, so swift and noiseless were his movements.

For a little he remained crouching against the side of the stairway, listening for any sound that might float down to him from above.

But none came—­and on a sudden, in one movement, as it were, he ran up the stairs and crouched down on the topmost one so that any bullet aimed at him as he appeared might perhaps fly overhead.

But none was fired; there was still no sound at all, no sign that the house held any living creature beside himself.  He began to think that Deede Dawson must have sent the two women away and now have gone himself.

But there was the pen downstairs with ink still wet upon the nib to prove that he had been here recently, and again very suddenly Rupert leaped to his feet and ran noiselessly down the corridor and entered quickly into Ella’s room.

He had not been in it since the night of his arrival at Bittermeads, but it appeared to him extraordinarily familiar and every little object in it of ornament or use seemed to speak to him softly of Ella’s gracious presence.

Of Ella herself there was no sign, but he noticed that the tassel at the end of the window blind cord was moving as if recently disturbed.

The movement was very slight, almost imperceptible, indeed, but it existed; and it proved that some one must very shortly before have been standing at the window.  He moved to it and looked out.