make out, occupies the position of a sort of working housekeeper, and
whose rooms are in the corner of the west wing immediately facing the
kitchen garden. Possibly you have not met Mrs. Fisher, Knox, but I have
made it my business to interview the whole of the staff and I may say
that Mrs. Fisher is a short, stout old lady, a native of Kent, I
believe, whose outline in no way corresponds to that which I saw upon
the blind. Therefore, unless the door which communicates with the
servants' quarters was unlocked again to-night--to what are we reduced
in seeking to explain the presence of a woman in Colonel Menendez's
room? Madame de Staemer, unassisted, could not possibly have mounted the
stairs."

"Stop, Harley!" I said, sternly. "Stop."

He ceased speaking, and I watched the steady glow of his cigarette in
the darkness. It lighted up his bronzed face and showed me the steely
gleam of his eyes.

"You are counting too much on the locking of the door by Pedro," I
continued, speaking very deliberately. "He is a man I would trust no
farther than I could see him, and if there is anything dark underlying
this matter you depend that he is involved in it. But the most natural
explanation, and also the most simple, is this--Colonel Menendez has
been taken seriously ill, and someone is in his room in the capacity of
a nurse."

"Her behaviour was scarcely that of a nurse in a sick-room," murmured
Harley.

"For God's sake tell me the truth," I said. "Tell me all you saw."