“And at what time is it seen?”
“Very late—not before two in the morning, as a rule.”
“And how long does it remain?”
“Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour, or more. Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and remained lit until two-fifty-five.”
“And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?”
“Nobody. Nobody at all. It’s being watched front and back. Twice we’ve been in and hunted the place all over—we got leave to do this—but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed incredulously, “that is a ridiculous thing to say. If a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the house. Probably there’s a secret entrance of which you know nothing about.”
“There are only three entrances,” he answered quickly, “and one of ’em can’t rightly be called an entrance. There’s the front door, and the back door for the tradesmen, and then there’s a queer little way out into Crane’s alley—we can’t think why that entrance was ever made.”
The “queer little way out” I at once guessed to be the dark, underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her hidden in the house.
“And are the entrances all locked?” I asked.