"It's singular," he said, knitting his brows. "He must be a sound sleeper, must Mr. Felix. I'll try again."
He continued to knock and call "loud enough," as he declared, "to rouse the dead," but no response came to the anxious little group on the landing.
"There's not only no keyhole," said Constable Nightingale, "but there's no handle to take hold of. The door's for all the world like a safe without a knob. Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix! Don't you hear us, sir? I've got something particular to say to you."
For all the effect he produced he might have spoken to a stone wall, and he and Constable Wigg and Mrs. Middlemore stood looking helplessly at each other.
"I tell you what it is," he said, tightening his belt, "this has got beyond a joke. What with the silence, and the bloodstains, and the man with the red handkercher round his neck as run out of the house while Wigg and me was talking together outside, there's more in this than meets the eye. Now, Mrs. Middlemore, there's no occasion for us to speak low any more; it's wearing to the throat. Have you got any doubt at all that the brass plate there couldn't be fixed as it is unless somebody was inside the room?"
"I'm certain of it, Mr. Nightingale, I'm certain of it."
"Then Mr. Felix, or somebody else, must be there, and if he's alive couldn't help hearing us, unless he's took a sleeping draught of twenty-horse power. There's a bell wire up there; Wigg, give me a back."
Constable Wigg stooped, and Constable Nightingale stood on his back and reached the wire, which he pulled smartly for so long a time that Constable Wigg's back gave way, and brought Constable Nightingale to the ground somewhat unexpectedly. Certainly every person in the house possessed of the sense of hearing must have heard the bell, which had a peculiar resonant ring, and seemed on this occasion to have a hundred ghostly echoes which proclaimed themselves incontinently from attic to basement. No well-behaved echo would have displayed such a lack of method.
"Oughtn't that to rouse him?" asked Constable Nightingale.
"It ought to," replied Mrs. Middlemore, "if----" and then suddenly paused, the "if" frozen on her tongue.