A roll-top desk in the parlor caught his eye. The cover was raised, and he turned in that direction.
“I’ll see what that contains, for a starter,” thought Patsy. “’Twas very good of him to leave it open. I’ll go through it like a shot through a gun. The drawers first and then——”
Then, on the contrary, the hurried search he had begun abruptly ended.
The silence was broken by a threatening command from behind him, a voice so curt and cold that no sane man would have ignored it.
“Cut that! Sit down in the chair, or you’ll drop on the floor in a condition you’ll not fancy.”
Patsy, kneeling at the desk, one of the drawers of which he had pulled open, swung round like a flash.
A tall, smoothly shaved, black-eyed man had stepped noiselessly from one of the bedrooms. There was murder in his eyes, also in his right hand.
It held a revolver, aimed point-blank at the crouching detective.[Pg 22]
CHAPTER VI.
UNDER TRUE COLORS.
Patsy Garvan realized on the instant that he had been trapped; that he was in wrong, as well as right; that the man who now held him up must have suspected something threatening, and instead of responding to the knock on the outer door, had quickly extinguished the light in the parlor and then stepped into the bedroom to await developments.