searching, he came upon another button well hid amid the tapestry on the
wall, which, when pressed, caused something to be disengaged which
gradually lowered the cage within reach of Mr. Gryce's hand.

"We will not send this poor bird aloft again," said he, detaching the
cage and holding it for a moment in his hand. "An English starling is
none too common in this country. Hark! he is going to speak."

But the sharp-eyed bird, warned perhaps by the emphatic gesture of the
detective that silence would be more in order at this moment than his
usual appeal to "remember Evelyn," whisked about in his cage for an
instant, and then subsided into a doze, which may have been real, and
may have been assumed under the fascinating eye of the old gentleman who
held him. Mr. Gryce placed the cage on the floor, and idly, or because
the play pleased him, old and staid as he was, pressed another button on
the table--a button he had hitherto neglected touching--and glanced
around to see what color the light would now assume.

But the yellow glare remained. The investigation which the apparatus had
gone through had probably disarranged the wires. With a shrug he was
moving off, when he suddenly made a hurried gesture, directing the
attention of the expert to a fact for which neither of them was
prepared. The opening which led into the antechamber, and which was the
sole means of communication with the rest of the house, was slowly
closing. From a yard's breadth it became a foot; from a foot it became
an inch; from an inch----

"Well, that is certainly the contrivance of a lazy man," laughed the
expert. "Seated in his chair here, he can close his door at will. No
shouting after a deaf servant, no awkward stumbling over rugs to shut it