"I guess it's not my turn yet," he murmured, and went back to the couch. He drew his cap down about his ears, fastened his fur coat up to the chin, and lay flat on his broad back. But before the cigar was finished he was on his feet again. He lifted the couch and placed it with his head against the door. Then he extinguished the butt of the cigar, lay down, and went to sleep.
Mr. Banks awoke suddenly. He was stiff and cold, but every sense was on the alert. His head felt much better than it had before his sleep. The room was full of gray light that filtered down from the snow-veiled window in the roof. He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. He listened intently, but could not hear a sound.
"I can see well enough now to take a hand in the game," he said. "So I guess it is my turn to play."
He lifted the cot away from the door and set it down at one side without a sound. Then he raised his right leg, drew his knee well back, presented the heel of his big boot at the lock of the door, and drove it forward with all the strength of his great hip and thigh. The lock burst, and fell in fragments; and the door, having been constructed so as to open inward, split, and tore itself from its hinges and flapped wide. Thick muscles had bested thin iron in a single effort.
"There! Confound you!" exclaimed Mr. Banks, staggering a little to recover the balance of his big body. He saw, beyond the gaping and twisted door, by the feeble light from his own room, a dark, bare hall and the unpainted rails around the top of a narrow staircase. He advanced one foot across the threshold, stooped forward, and listened intently. His big body, in its big coat of coonskins, filled the width of the doorway and shut out much of the feeble illumination that descended from the skylight behind and above him. So he stood for a minute or two before he heard a sound save that of his own breathing. And then! What is that? A single, furtive tap, as of something hard on a thin edge of wood, close in front of him. He turned sideways on the threshold so as to let the light from behind him reach the floor in front.
What was that, thin and black, slanting up at him between the rounds of the railing? It had a sinister look. It did not move. Behind it was the black gulf of the stairway. Mr. Banks hesitated for a moment, then began to edge forward.
"Stop where you are!" commanded a voice—the voice of old Captain Wigmore. "This thing is the barrel of a rifle. I am behind the rifle. If I press on the trigger, my dear Banks, I am sure to hit you somewhere, you are so unnecessarily large. In the belly, most likely. That's right! Stand still."
"You, Wigmore!" exclaimed the New Yorker. "What is the meaning of this? What are you talking about? You must be stark mad!"
The other laughed. It was a most discomforting sound. The laugh of a land crab—if the beast could laugh—would doubtless resemble Captain Wigmore's expression of mirth.
"You seem to be indignant, my dear fellow," he said, with exasperating calm. "But what do you expect? I caught you breaking into my house when you were under the impression that I was not at home. Do you think I should have put you in my own bed, with a hot-water bottle at your feet, and carried your breakfast up to you this morning? No, no, my dear Banks! It is my duty to this country, and to society in general, to keep a firm hand on you until the officers of the law relieve me of the charge."