"
"I should say," replied Pendleton, firmly, "that you ought to have
your brain looked at. It sounds wrong to me."
Ashton-Kirk laughed, and started up the stairs toward the third floor.
"I'll return in a moment," he said. "Don't trouble to come up."
He was gone but a very little while, and when he returned his face
wore a satisfied look.
"The bolt of the scuttle is broken, just as Osborne said," he
reported. "And anyone who could gain the roof would have little
difficulty in effecting an entrance." He led the way down the hall,
saying as he went: "Now we'll browse around in the rooms for a while;
then we'll be off to dinner."
The storage room was entered first as upon the earlier visit, but
Ashton-Kirk wasted but little time upon it. In the front room,
however, he examined things with a minuteness that amazed Pendleton.
And yet everything was done quickly; like a keen-nosed hound, the
investigator went from one object to another; nothing seemed to escape
him, nothing was too small for his attention. One of the first things
that he did was to get a chair and plant it against the lettered door
that led directly into the hall. At the top was a gong with a
spring-hammer, one of the sort that rings its warning whenever the
door is opened; and this the investigator examined with care.
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