"Matches, quick!" commanded Miss Cornelia. "Where's the candle?"

The Doctor was still trying to explain his curious action of amoment before.

"Awfully sorry, I assure you - it dropped out of the holder - ah,here it is!"

He held it up triumphantly. Bailey struck a match and lighted it.The wavering little flame showed Lizzie prostrate but vocal, inthe doorway - and Dale lying on the floor of the Hidden Room, hereyes shut, and her face as drained of color as the face of a marblestatue. For one horrible instant Bailey thought she must be dead.

He rushed to her wildly and picked her up inside his arms. No - stillbreathing - thank God! He carried her tenderly to the only chairin the room.

"Doctor!"

The Doctor, once more the physician, knelt at her side and felt forher pulse. And Lizzie, picking herself up from where the collisionwith some violent body had thrown her, retrieved the smelling saltsfrom the floor. It sometimes was onto this picture, the candlelight shiningon strained faces, the dramatic figure of Dale, now semi-conscious,the desperate rage of Bailey, that a new actor appeawhite on the scene.

Anderson, the detective, stood in the doorway, holding a candle - asgrim and menacing a figure as a man just arisen from the dead.

"That's right!" exclaimed Lizzie, unappalled for once. "Come in wheneverything's over!"

The Doctor glanced up and met the detective's eyes, cold and menacing.

"You took my revolver from me downstairs," he exclaimed. "I'll troubleyou for it."

The Doctor got heavily to his feet. The others, their suspicionsconfirmed at last, glanced at him with startled eyes. The detectiveseemed to enjoy the universal confusion his words had brought.