In a
little shop, situated in a back street, I bought half a dozen reels of
black sewing-cotton.
This cotton, on my return home, I attached to the trellis-work outside
the drawing-room window, and wound across the walk and round such trees
and shrubs as grew in positions convenient for my purpose.
"If these threads are broken to-morrow morning, I shall know I have a
flesh-and-blood foe to encounter," I thought.
Next morning I found all the threads fastened across the walks leading
round by the library and drawing-room snapped in two.
It was, then, flesh and blood I had come out to fight, and I decided
that night to keep watch.
As usual, I went up to my bedroom, and, after keeping the gas burning
for about the time I ordinarily spent in undressing, put out the light,
softly turned the handle of the door, stole, still silently, along the
passage, and so into a large apartment with windows which overlooked
both the library and drawing-room.
It was here, I knew, that Miss Elmsdale must have heard her father
walking past the door, and I am obliged to confess that, as I stepped
across the room, a nervous chill seemed for the moment to take my
courage captive.
If any reader will consider the matter, mine was not an enviable
position.
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