“As usual,” assented the duke.  “What is the matter with that!”

“Nothing,” said Lever, with a deepening accent, “only you did not.  For one of zem is dead upstairs.”

There was a shocking stillness for an instant in that room.  It may be (so supernatural is the word death) that each of those idle men looked for a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea.  One of them—­the duke, I think—­even said with the idiotic kindness of wealth:  “Is there anything we can do?”

“He has had a priest,” said the Jew, not untouched.

Then, as to the clang of doom, they awoke to their own position.  For a few weird seconds they had really felt as if the fifteenth waiter might be the ghost of the dead man upstairs.  They had been dumb under that oppression, for ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like beggars.  But the remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous; broke it abruptly and with a brutal reaction.  The colonel flung over his chair and strode to the door.  “If there was a fifteenth man here, friends,” he said, “that fifteenth fellow was a thief.  Down at once to the front and back doors and secure everything; then we’ll talk.  The twenty-four pearls of the club are worth recovering.”

Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it was gentlemanly to be in such a hurry about anything; but, seeing the duke dash down the stairs with youthful energy, he followed with a more mature motion.

At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and declared that he had found the pile of fish plates on a sideboard, with no trace of the silver.

The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled helter-skelter down the passages divided into two groups.  Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit.  Colonel Pound, with the chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted down the corridor leading to the servants’ quarters, as the more likely line of escape.  As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern of the cloak room, and saw a short, black-coated figure, presumably an attendant, standing a little way back in the shadow of it.

“Hallo, there!” called out the duke.  “Have you seen anyone pass?”

The short figure did not answer the question directly, but merely said:  “Perhaps I have got what you are looking for, gentlemen.”

They paused, wavering and wondering, while he quietly went to the back of the cloak room, and came back with both hands full of shining silver, which he laid out on the counter as calmly as a salesman.  It took the form of a dozen quaintly shaped forks and knives.

“You—­you—­” began the colonel, quite thrown off his balance at last.  Then he peered into the dim little room and saw two things:  first, that the short, black-clad man was dressed like a clergyman; and, second, that the window of the room behind him was burst, as if someone had passed violently through.  “Valuable things to deposit in a cloak room, aren’t they?” remarked the clergyman, with cheerful composure.