Miss Cornelia re-entered cautiously with her candle, closing the door gently behind her as she came.

“What did you see?” gasped Dale.

Miss Cornelia smiled broadly.

“I didn’t see anything,” she admitted with the greatest calm.  “I had to get that dratted detective out of the room before I assassinated him.”

“Nobody went through the skylight?” said Dale incredulously.

“They have now,” answered Miss Cornelia with obvious satisfaction.  “The whole outfit of them.”

She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown.  He was lying limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for him—­and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet, like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her false cry of alarm.

“Then why did you—­” began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt’s reasons for her trick.

“Because,” interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, “that money’s in this room.  If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did he come back and hide there?”

Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.

“He got it out of the safe—­and that’s as far as he did get with it,” she persisted inexorably.  “There’s a hat behind that safe, a man’s felt hat!”

So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he rebuffed her proffer of assistance!

“Oh, I wish he’d take his hat and go home!” groaned Lizzie inattentive to all but her own fears.

Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her.  She crossed behind the wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.

“A half-burned candle,” she mused.  “Another thing the detective overlooked.”

She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the candle to the Hidden Room and back again.

“Oh, my God—­another one!” shrieked Lizzie as the dark shape of a man appeared suddenly outside the window, as if materialized from the air.

Miss Cornelia snatched up her revolver from the top of the hamper.

“Don’t shoot—­it’s Jack!” came a warning cry from Dale as she recognized the figure of her lover.

Miss Cornelia laid her revolver down on the hamper again.  The vacant eyes of the Unknown caught the movement.

Bailey swung in through the window, panting a little from his exertions.

“The man Lizzie saw drop from the skylight undoubtedly got to the roof from this window,” he said.  “It’s quite easy.”

“But not with one hand,” said Miss Cornelia, with her gaze now directed at the row of tall closets around the walls of the room.  “When that detective comes back I may have a surprise party for him,” she muttered, with a gleam of hope in her eye.

Dale explained the situation to Jack.