"The corridor with the windows on to the courtyard on the one side and the doors of the receptions on the other?" Hanaud asked.
"Yes."
"Were the curtains drawn across all those windows too, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere. I felt my way along the wall to my right—that is, in the hall, of course, not the corridor—until my hands slipped off the surface and touched nothing. I had reached the embrasure of the doorway. I felt for the door-knob, turned it and entered the room. The light switch was in the wall at the side of the door, close to my left hand. I snapped it down. I think that I was still half asleep when I turned the light on in the treasure-room, as we called it. But the next moment I was wide awake—oh, I have never been more wide awake in my life. My fingers indeed were hardly off the switch after turning the light on, before they were back again turning the light off. But this time I eased the switch up very carefully, so that there should be no snap—no, not the tiniest sound to betray me. There was so short an interval between the two movements of my hand that I had just time to notice the clock on the top of the marquetry cabinet in the middle of the wall opposite to me, and then once more I stood in darkness, but stock still and holding my breath—a little frightened—yes, no doubt a little frightened, but more astonished than frightened. For in the inner wall of the room, at the other end, close by the window, there,"—and Ann pointed to the second of those shuttered windows which stared so blankly on the garden—"the door which was always locked since Simon Harlowe's death stood open and a bright light burned beyond."
Betty Harlowe uttered a little cry.
"That door?" she exclaimed, now at last really troubled. "It stood open? How can that have been?"
Hanaud shifted his position in his chair, and asked her a question.
"On which side of the door was the key, Mademoiselle?"
"On Madame's, if the key was in the lock at all."
"Oh! You don't remember whether it was?"