"But you are not going," Fenwick cried in dismay. "You are not going away from your own house at this time of night?"
"You forget," the cripple said, gravely, "that for the time being you are my tenant, and that I have no more right in this house, indeed, not so much right, as one of these policemen. I have sent my servants away, and I am at present staying—in fact, it does not matter much where I am staying. Come along."
The trap was so neatly laid and so coolly worked that Fenwick could only sit and gasp in his chair, while his two victims walked quietly away in the most natural manner in the world.
"We had better be off," Gurdon whispered. "There is no occasion for us to stay any longer. Let us follow the cripple. By Jove, I never saw anything done more neatly than that!"
CHAPTER XV
FELIX ZARY
It would have been a comparatively easy matter for the two friends to have slipped out of the house before the cripple came down the stairs accompanied by the young man who called himself Charles Evors. The front door was still open, and there was no one to bar their way. Then it suddenly occurred to Gurdon that by so doing they would betray the secret of the moveable panel which communicated with the house next door.
"It would never do to go away like this," he said, hurriedly. "Besides, it is more than likely that we shall want to use that entrance again. We shall have to run the risk of losing sight of the cripple; anything is better than leaving that panel open for the servants to discover in the morning."
Venner could see for himself at once that there was no help for it, so without any further discussion on the matter, the two men hurried down the stairs, their feet making no noise on the thick carpet, and then they darted through the hole into the house next door. It was only the work of a moment to replace the panel, but hardly had they done so before they heard a confused murmur of voices on the other side. Gurdon pressed his back to the panel until the noise of the voices ceased.
"That was a pretty close call," he said. "Give me the mouldings and I will try to make them secure without any unnecessary noise. I daresay we can get the nails to fit the same holes. Anyway, there must be no hammering, or we shall be pretty sure to rouse the suspicions of the people next door."