He was listening now, every faculty alert. Was some one standing outside there, as tense, as silent, waiting—as he stood tense and silent, waiting, here within? If so, then, that was another angle to the situation. It must be so! There was not a sound out there—there had not been a sound. He had heard no one go away. Well, two could play at a game like that! And it would be the other who would show his hand!
He moved softly toward the door. In the darkness he felt out with his hand. It touched the panel of the door, crept down until it clasped the knob—and then suddenly, even as he moved swiftly to one side out of the direct line, he flung the door wide back upon its hinges.
And where the door had stood, there showed now but an oblong of filmy, hazy murk, scarcely more penetrable to the eye than the black interior of the hut. Nothing more! No, that was not true. There was something else—something white, a small white fluttering thing that seemed to drift and flutter downward to the ground. No sound from without—save the night sounds of the woods: The leaves talking to one another; the stir in the grasses; the low, faint, never-ending chatter of insects.
The watch ticking on Captain Francis Newcombe's wrist became a loud, discordant thing. It ticked away the minutes before he moved again.
His eyes became accustomed to the murk outside the open door. There was no one there.
That white thing lying by the threshold was an envelope. It had been stuck in the door. He reached out now, and picked it up. And now he closed the door again, and, with the flashlight on, he tore the envelope open.
He stared at the sheet of paper it contained. The single line of crude, printed letters seemed to leap out at him from the white sheet, scorching, burning, searing its message into his consciousness. He raised his hand and drew it across his forehead. It came away wet with sweat. He looked around him, snarling like a beast at bay. A thousand minions of hell here in the hut were screeching in his ears the words he had just read:
"Who murdered Sir Harris Greaves?"