"No. Why?" she demanded, reluctant, spirited, obstinate—and lovely in his eyes.
"If he were anybody else," Maitland indicated, with a jerk of his head toward the burglar. "But didn't you see? He must be Maitland—and he's my double. I'll stay, brazen it out, then, as soon as possible, make my escape and join you by the gate. Your motor's there—what? Be ready for me…."
But she had grasped his intention and was suddenly become pliant to his will. "You're wonderful!" she told him with a little low laugh; and was gone, silently as a spirit.
The curtains fell behind her in long, straight folds; Maitland stilled their swaying with a touch, and stepped back into the room. For a moment he caught the eye of the fellow on the floor; and it was upturned to his, sardonically intelligent. But the lord of the manor had little time to debate consequences.
Abruptly the door was flung wide and a short stout man, clutching up his trousers with a frantic hand, burst into the library, brandishing overhead a rampant revolver.
"'Ands hup!" he cried, leveling at Maitland. And then, with a fallen countenance; "G-r-r-reat 'eavins, sir! You, Mister Maitland, sir!"
"Ah, Higgins," his employer greeted the butler blandly.
Higgins pulled up, thunderstruck, panting and perspiring with agitation. His fat cheeks quivered like the wattles of a gobbler, and his eyes bulged as, by degrees, he became alive to the situation.
Maitland began to explain, forestalling the embarrassments of cross-examination.
"By the merest accident, Higgins, I was passing in my car with a party of friends. Just for a joke I thought I'd steal up to the house and see how you were behaving yourselves. By chance—again—I happened to see this light through the library windows." And Maitland, putting an incautious hand upon the bull's-eye on the desk, withdrew it instantly, with an exclamation of annoyance and four scorched fingers.