Then he thundered at the door, after which we both listened. There was no sound, but I thought I detected the smell of burning paper.
All the other guests were apparently out at the time, for the noise we made attracted only the servants.
“Baker!” Seton cried to a man who was in his shirtsleeves and wore an apron of green baize, “we must force this door. There’s a crow-bar down in the cellar. Go and get it.”
As the man addressed ran downstairs, the ex-butler turned to me with a scared expression upon his face, saying——
“This is very peculiar, sir. Why has he locked himself in like this? Did you really hear a noise?”
“Yes. I am sure I did, yet with the roar of the traffic out in the road, I really couldn’t quite swear to it,” was my reply.
“What I heard was like a man bustling about hurriedly, and yet trying to make no noise.”
“Surely he can’t have fainted--or--or committed suicide!” Seton remarked.
For a few minutes we stood outside the door utterly mystified, until the porter brought us a rusty bar of iron about three feet long, curved and flattened at the end—a very serviceable crow-bar.
This, Seton inserted between the door and the jamb, close to the lock, and then drew it back slowly. The woodwork groaned, creaked and cracked and with a sudden jerk the wood round the mortice lock tore away and the door flew open.