A room at the end of the corridor, on the third floor, used mostly for storage of furniture, bore traces of recent occupancy. A chair had been drawn up to a small table, on which there was a half-burned candle, a picture magazine of quite recent date, and an ash tray containing charred cigarette ends.
As I was examining the room and its contents in the light of my electric torch, a quick exclamation from McGinity directed my attention to a French window, which gave on to an iron-railed, stone balcony.
"There he is!" whispered the reporter; "out on the balcony."
I quickly turned off the flashlight. All I could discern was a black something standing on the balcony, silhouetted against a bright, starlit sky. The next moment, the shadow started to move towards the window. It was perhaps a little foolish of me, but I dashed forward, threw the window open wide, and turned a flood of light upon—Schweizer.
The butler, I immediately recalled, was occupying a bedroom a few doors down the hall from the one we were exploring. After he had explained that he often read and smoked in this room, and walked out on the balcony for fresh air, when he was troubled with insomnia, I dismissed him, without telling him what we were searching for. But he must have guessed it, for I heard him running down the hall to his bedroom.
He had no sooner gone when I was struck by a sudden idea. "It's possible," I suggested, "that Mr. Zzyx, in his after-midnight excursions, visits the butler's pantry, and makes a raid on our refrigerator. He has the appetite and stomach capacity of an ostrich. What do you say?"
"Possible," McGinity concurred. "Let's go."
As I crept stealthily downstairs, with the reporter at my side, I fully expected, at any moment, to be confronted with a long hairy arm, stretching out from some dark corner, to clutch at my throat. My feeling of nervousness increased when, in the midst of our search on the ground floor, my flashlight suddenly failed. We had just stepped into the dining room. I was reluctant to switch on the wall, or ceiling lights, for fear of alarming the servants, or attracting the attention of the night watchman who patrolled the grounds. Under no consideration could we afford to arouse the household, especially Henry.
So we elected to sit down in the darkness and wait for something to happen, possibly the discovery of the prowling Mr. Zzyx. I marveled at the instinct which enabled him to move about so freely in the dark. It was so quiet in the dining room that we could hear the ticking of the grandfather's clock in the library. There we sat, waiting, in the utter silence of the night. One o'clock struck—then half-past.
All the time we were seated there, I fancied I heard a sound quite distinct above the ticking of the clock; a faint, crackling sound, like a dog makes when it is crunching bones between its teeth. I made no mention of it to McGinity, but my heart was going in great sickening thumps. Another ten minutes of strained silence in the darkness, and my nerves were stretched to the limit.