"Doctor, why did you put out that candle?" Miss Cornelia's voice cut the blackness like a knife.
"I didn't--I--"
"You did--I saw you do it."
The brief exchange of accusation and denial took but an instant of time, as the mantel swung wide open. The next instant there was a rush of feet across the floor, from the fireplace--the shock of a collision between two bodies--the sound of a heavy fall.
"What was that?" queried Bailey dazedly, with a feeling as if some great winged creature had brushed at him and passed.
Lizzie answered from the doorway.
"Oh, oh!" she groaned in stricken accents. "Somebody knocked me down and tramped on me!"
"Matches, quick!" commanded Miss Cornelia. "Where's the candle?"
The Doctor was still trying to explain his curious action of a moment 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, in the doorway--and Dale lying on the floor of the Hidden Room, her eyes shut, and her face as drained of color as the face of a marble statue. For one horrible instant Bailey thought she must be dead.
He rushed to her wildly and picked her up in his arms. No--still breathing--thank God! He carried her tenderly to the only chair in the room.
"Doctor!"
The Doctor, once more the physician, knelt at her side and felt for her pulse. And Lizzie, picking herself up from where the collision with some violent body had thrown her, retrieved the smelling salts from the floor. It was onto this picture, the candlelight shining on strained faces, the dramatic figure of Dale, now semi-conscious, the desperate rage of Bailey, that a new actor appeared on the scene.
Anderson, the detective, stood in the doorway, holding a candle--as grim and menacing a figure as a man just arisen from the dead.
"That's right!" said Lizzie, unappalled for once. "Come in when everything's over!"
The Doctor glanced up and met the detective's eyes, cold and menacing.
"You took my revolver from me downstairs," he said. "I'll trouble you for it."
The Doctor got heavily to his feet. The others, their suspicions confirmed at last, looked at him with startled eyes. The detective seemed to enjoy the universal confusion his words had brought.
Slowly, with sullen reluctance, the Doctor yielded up the stolen weapon. The detective examined it casually and replaced it in his hip pocket.
"I've something to settle with you pretty soon," he said through clenched teeth, addressing the Doctor. "And I'll settle it properly. Now--what's this?"