“Step dis way!” said Mr. Crocker jocosely.

They left the room cautiously.  Mr. Crocker for a moment had a sense of something missing.  He had reached the stairs before he realised what it was.  Then it dawned upon him that what was lacking was the applause.  The scene had deserved a round.

Jimmy, vigilant in the gallery, heard the library door open softly and, peering over the rail, perceived two dim forms in the darkness.  One was large, the other small.  They crossed the room together.

Whispered words reached him.

“I thought you said you came in this way.”

“Sure.”

“Then why’s the shutter closed?”

“I fixed it after I was in.”

There was a faint scraping sound, followed by a click.  The darkness of the room was relieved by moonlight.  The figures passed through.  Jimmy ran down from the gallery, and closed the windows softly.  He had just fastened the shutters, when from the passage outside there came the unmistakeable sound of a footstep.

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE LIBRARY

Jimmy’s first emotion on hearing the footstep was the crude instinct of self-preservation.  All that he was able to think of at the moment was the fact that he was in a questionable position and one which would require a good deal of explaining away if he were found, and his only sensation was a strong desire to avoid discovery.  He made a silent, scrambling leap for the gallery stairs, and reached their shelter just as the door opened.  He stood there, rigid, waiting to be challenged, but apparently he had moved in time, for no voice spoke.  The door closed so gently as to be almost inaudible, and then there was silence again.  The room remained in darkness, and it was this perhaps that first suggested to Jimmy the comforting thought that the intruder was equally desirous of avoiding the scrutiny of his fellows.  He had taken it for granted in his first panic that he himself was the only person in that room whose motive for being there would not have borne inspection.  But now, safely hidden in the gallery, out of sight from the floor below, he had the leisure to consider the newcomer’s movements and to draw conclusions from them.

An honest man’s first act would surely have been to switch on the lights.  And an honest man would hardly have crept so stealthily.  It became apparent to Jimmy, as he leaned over the rail and tried to pierce the darkness, that there was sinister work afoot; and he had hardly reached this conclusion when his mind took a further leap and he guessed the identity of the soft-footed person below.  It could be none but his old friend Lord Wisbeach, known to “the boys” as Gentleman Jack.  It surprised him that he had not thought of this before.  Then it surprised him that, after the talk they had only a few hours earlier in that very room, Gentleman Jack should have dared to risk this raid.