He looked at the number; it was a brass "4." He looked at the badge, and then rose upright, clamping his jaws hard and understanding.
What he had unearthed was the clothing of the Common keeper who had been done to death last night—the clothing which the assassin had stolen and worn.
And he had found that clothing here, hidden in the grounds of Wuthering Grange! Why, then, in that case, the murderer—— He stopped; and the thought went no farther—stopped, and releasing the button of the torch, let utter darkness swing in and surround him.
Some one had entered the ruin—some one was moving about overhead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE THUNDERBOLT
It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained ear recognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be coming here at this time when all the ladies of the household would be in their rooms dressing for dinner?
He crept in the darkness out of the cell in which he had been digging, through the one next and through the next again, until he came to the passage leading to the staircase, and then, dropping on his hands and knees, went soundlessly up the stone steps.
Above him as he crept upward—as slow as any tortoise and with far less noise—sounded the woman's faint footfalls pacing the paved floor with that persistent restlessness which tells of extreme agitation. He had but just begun to ask himself what that agitation might portend, when something occurred which caused him to twitch up his head with a jerk and crouch there, a thing all eyes and ears.