“It was early this morning,” he faltered, “about two o’clock, I heard noises in the lower part of the house. I came down thinking likely it was you, and remembering that you had been sick yesterday—”
“Yes, go on.”
The thought of my truancy was no balm to my conscience just then.
“As I came into the hall, I saw lights in the library. As you weren’t down last night the room hadn’t been lighted at all. I heard steps, and some one tapping with a hammer—”
“Yes; a hammer. Go on!”
It was, then, the same old story! The war had been carried openly into the house, but Bates,—just why should any one connected with the conspiracy injure Bates, who stood so near to Pickering, its leader? The fellow was undoubtedly hurt,—there was no mistaking the lump on his head. He spoke with a painful difficulty that was not assumed, I felt increasingly sure, as he went on.
“I saw a man pulling out the books and tapping the inside of the shelves. He was working very fast. And the next thing I knew he let in another man through one of the terrace doors,—the one there that still stands a little open.”
He flinched as be turned slightly to indicate it, and his face twitched with pain.
“Never mind that; tell the rest of your story.”
“Then I ran in, grabbed one of the big candelabra from the table, and went for the nearest man. They were about to begin on the chimney-breast there,—it was Mr. Glenarm’s pride in all the house,—and that accounts for my being there in front of the fireplace. They rather got the best of me, sir.