“I don’t wonder you didn’t know the right one,” Ben said politely. “I never saw a house with so many rooms. I say, in that cloak and hat you look very much like me in my costume. I don’t remember seeing you in the moving-pictures.”
“I changed my things,” muttered the man. “Sometimes I wear one set and other times another.” He walked to the door, opened it, and went down the hall.
“That’s funny,” said Ben, half-aloud. “He keeps his hat on in the house. I suppose he thinks, because it’s part of his costume, it’s a perfectly proper thing to do.”
Before the mirror at the bureau Ben put on his own broad-brimmed hat, turned on the light at a wall-bracket, and surveyed himself in the glass.
“The hat does help to make a fellow look different,” he said to himself. “I guess I’ll keep mine on when I go downstairs; though I don’t suppose it would be the right thing to wear a hat to dinner.”
He switched off both the lights and went out into the hall. The gallery and the lower floor of the big house appeared to be empty; he supposed the guests had all gone to make ready for dinner. He walked around the gallery to the staircase. The afterglow of sunset partly lighted the lower floor, and here and there soft lamps shed circles of radiance, but for the most part the house was pleasantly shadowy, which made its fine furnishings all the more interesting.
Ben went down the stairs and stopped in the large hall to look at a grandfather’s clock that stood opposite the front door. Above the dial was a painted ship that sailed on a deep-blue sea. He was admiring the ship when somewhere in the upper part of the house someone gave a scream.
Ben waited a moment. There was another shout. Doors on the gallery opened. He heard people calling “What’s the matter?” There was confusion above-stairs. Someone shouted “Lock the doors! Don’t let him get away!”
The front door was open. Ben dashed across the polished floor to shut it.
His hand was on the knob when someone caught him from behind. A rug slipped under his feet and he came down hard on the floor.