“I can’t make this out. ‘Somebody’s in the house who is no good.’ Curse it, I wish the writer had been a little more explicit; this is most incomprehensible.”
Again he looked out of his window in every direction, but could not see a living creature.
The handwriting on the paper he failed to recognise.
“This is most remarkable,” he ejaculated. “Who is in the house, I wonder, that means no good? Some robber, I suppose—some suspected person. Well, I’ll have my revolver handy in case of any attack; but after all it may only be a grim joke of one of my parlour acquaintances?”
He tried to persuade himself that this last hypothesis was the correct one, but signally failed in doing so.
Not a sound disturbed the unbroken stillness of the night.
Peace was not a man to give way to idle or groundless fears.
Nevertheless he could not but acknowledge that the circumstance was singular, and, taken altogether, was of an exceptional character.
“Who could have thrown the stone and paper into the room?” murmured he. “If it came from a friend why did he not show himself?”
During his sojourn at the “Carved Lion” he had made it a practice to have his dog Gip sleep in the same room as himself, and he had not departed from that rule on the present occasion.