“I want to see your partner, Alix Stothert. Why has he gone downstairs?”
“To see who might be there, milord. We thought we heard somebody in the house, so he go down to search about. And it was only you? Then why did you not say?”
“Because when he opened the door I saw a pistol in his hand, so I thought he might shoot before he recognized me. Listen, I hear him.”
The baize door in the hall had opened and shut again, and Stothert now stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up in amazement.
“Lord Froissart!” he exclaimed. “Well, of all the wonders!”
He came quickly up the stairs, and a minute later the two men and Camille Lenoir were together in the room from which Stothert and his companion had just emerged.
“This is a most perplexing thing,” Stothert said, as he pushed a chair towards the ‘visitor.’ “I wish you would tell me, first of all, how you got in, Lord Froissart.”
“Certainly. I came to see you this afternoon about six o’clock, and when I arrived at the house I found the door open—some workmen were attending to your electric light in the hall. I walked in, meaning to come up to your office, but I went a floor too high, took a wrong turning off the landing, and found myself in a passage along which I wandered until I came to a door which I opened and passed through, still trying to find your office. It is a heavy mahogany door, and as I shut it behind me the handle came off in my hand. While trying to refit the handle I accidentally pushed the metal stem through the socket in the door, and at once I realized I was a prisoner, for the passage led into a room from which there is no other outlet.”
He paused a moment, and then continued:
“When I found it impossible to open the door by any means, I hammered on it with my stick, and shouted. In fact I made all the noise I could, but apparently you didn’t hear me.”