"'She may shiver,' retorted the seaman angrily. 'I shall be glad to see her shiver before the beak, to-morrow. He'll talk to her. Shivering won't get over him. He's used to it. Of course she's fainted. A woman can always faint when she finds herself in a difficulty. We'll have her up for obtaining money upon false pretences, all the same.'
"The united efforts of three or four of the party had burst open the door of the room, and everybody except the little group about the girl—myself among them—made for the street door, which was not locked.
"A couple of policemen arrived a few minutes afterwards, and thereupon began a severe inspection of the house from cellar to garret. They found an old woman in a back kitchen, who explained that the dining and drawing-room floors, and the front kitchen were let to the table-turning gentleman and his wife, and the young lady who lived with them. They had occupied the rooms nearly three months, had paid some rent, but were considerably in arrear. The landlord, who occupied the second floor, had gone into the country to see a sick daughter. Two young men lodged in the attics—printer's readers—but they were seldom in before eleven.
"In a word, the old woman, who was general drudge and caretaker, was alone in the basement with a plethoric spaniel, too old and obese to bark, and a tabby cat. All the rest of the house was empty of human life.
"The policemen and the late believers in Herr Kaltardern's occult powers explored every corner of the rooms which the Germans and their accomplice had inhabited. The personal belongings of the three were of the slightest, the Kaltarderns' sole possession being a large carpet bag of ancient and obsolete fashion, and a brush and comb. The room occupied by the girl was clean and tidy, and contained a respectable-looking wooden trunk.
"The machinery of the imposture stood confessed in this investigation. The bookcase was a dummy piece of furniture which concealed a door of communication between the front and back rooms. Door of room, and door of bookcase, the front of which opened in one piece, were both so artfully padded with baize as to open and shut noiselessly; and it was by this means that the tricksters had been able to bring their innocent accomplice into the room unobserved, or to go in and out themselves while the sceptical among their audience might be watching the only obvious entrance to the room. In the kitchen below the iron rod and the hole through the ceiling plainly indicated the means by which the girl had been lifted off her feet. The transverse bar was attached to the rod in the room above, by the noiseless hands of the professor.
"All this I heard afterwards from Gerald, who took an active part in the investigation. For myself, while the inquisitive explorers were tramping in and out of the rooms above and below, I remained beside the two good people who were caring for the helpless sharer in the foolish show—accomplice or victim, as the case might be.
"I had found and relighted the lamp, and by its light Mrs. Ravenshaw and I examined the girl's forehead, which had been severely cut in her fall. While we were gently drying the blood which stained her eyelids and cheeks, she opened her eyes and looked at us with a bewildered expression.
"'Oh, how my head aches!' she moaned. 'What was it hurt me like that?'
"'You were hurt in your fall,' I answered. 'Your head struck the edge of the table.'