The first step he took, however, brought his foot down upon some small hard object. He picked it up. It was the key, which must have slipped from the goldsmith's chain when it glided from his neck to the cushions of the chair, and thence, as he had turned himself about, to the floor.
Mad fancies
"Oh, ho!" laughed Lee, looking at the key as it lay in the palm of his hand; "you're a mighty slippery little customer!" and he was about to lay it with the chain, when he gave a start, and stood stock still, as if some sudden idea had mastered him; and still holding the key, he gazed from it towards the sphinx with thoughtful speculative eyes. Could it be that she was winking her heavy lids? Were her grim lips curving into a meaning smile until her very jaws seemed to be opening? or was it all only the shadowy flicker of the dying lamp? or perhaps a mere delusion of the young man's already highly excited brain.
Lawrence knew only that the half-mocking, half-goodnatured face beckoned him irresistibly.
The false panel.
One instant he stood hesitating. The next, he had seized the lamp, and with the key in his hand was on his knees before the panel.
CHAPTER XXVI.
"FIRE! FIRE!"
Silent and dark as any city of the dead lies Newmarket under the starless sky. Not so much as a glimmer to be seen even about the palace, excepting from the mullioned lattices of the king's own bedchamber.
Two hours since, Charles bade good-night to his courtiers, who, despite their best efforts to be entertaining, were yawning frightfully after their long day's pleasure; and then, retiring to his dressing-room, he dismissed also his drowsy valets, who, evidently for once in a way, seemed not indisposed to allow him to draw on his own night-cap instead of doing it for him, "for all the world," as he used to complain, as if he were "some poor Tyburn gallows-wretch."