“The police can confirm it, Knox!” he said, looking up, his face slightly flushed with triumph; “but I, personally, have no doubt!”
“You may have no doubt, Harley,” I retorted, “but I am full of doubt! What is the significance of this discovery to which you seem to attach so much importance?”
“At the moment,” replied my friend, “never mind; I still have hopes—although they have grown somewhat slender—of making a much more important discovery.”
“Why not permit the police to aid in the search?”
“The police are more useful in their present occupation,” he replied. “We are dealing with the most cunning knave produced by East or West, and I don't mean to let him slip through my fingers if he is in this house! Nevertheless, Knox, I am submitting you to rather an appalling risk, I know; for our man is desperate, and if he is still in the place will prove as dangerous as a cornered rat.”
“But the man who dropped through the trap?”
“The man who dropped through the trap,” said Harley, “was not Ali of Cairo—and it is Ali of Cairo for whom I am looking!”
“The hunchback we saw to-night?”
Harley nodded, and having listened intently for a few moments, proceeded again to search the singular apartments of the abode. In each was evidence of Oriental occupancy; indeed, some of the rooms possessed a sort of Arabian Nights atmosphere. But no living creature was to be seen or heard anywhere. It was while the two of us, having examined every inch of wall, I should think, in the building, were standing staring rather blankly at each other in the room with the lighted lantern, that I saw Harley's expression change.
“Why,” he muttered, “is this one room illuminated—and all the others in darkness?”