It was heavy indeed. Valentine, when he had fought down the hysteria that came upon him, had only one thought: to take the deadly object and put it somewhere out of Hugh Curtis’s way. If he could drop it from a window, so much the better. In the darkness the vague outline of its bulk, placed just where one had to turn to avoid the china-cabinet, was dreadfully familiar. He tried to recollect the way it worked. Only one thing stuck in his mind. ‘The ends are dangerous, the sides are safe.’ Or should it be, ‘The sides are dangerous, the ends are safe?’ While the two sentences were getting mixed up in his mind he heard the sound of ‘coo-ee,’ coming first from one part of the house, then from another. He could also hear footsteps in the hall below him.

Then he made up his mind, and with a confidence that surprised him put his arms round the wooden cube and lifted it into the air. He hardly noticed its weight as he ran with it down the corridor. Suddenly he realized that he must have passed through an open door. A ray of moonlight showed him that he was in a bedroom, standing directly in front of an old-fashioned wardrobe, a towering, majestic piece of furniture with three doors, the middle one holding a mirror. Dimly he saw himself reflected there, his burden in his arms. He deposited it on the parquet without making a sound; but on the way out he tripped over a footstool and nearly fell. He was relieved at making so much clatter, and the grating of the key, as he turned it in the lock, was music to his ears.

Automatically he put it in his pocket. But he paid the penalty for his clumsiness. He had not gone a step when a hand caught him by the elbow.

‘Why, it’s Valentine!’ Hugh Curtis cried. ‘Now come quietly, and take me to my host. I must have a drink.’

‘I should like one, too,’ said Valentine, who was trembling all over. ‘Why can’t we have some light?’

‘Turn it on, idiot,’ commanded his friend.

‘I can’t—it’s cut off at the main. We must wait till Richard gives the word.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I expect he’s tucked away somewhere. Richard!’ Valentine called out, ‘Dick!’ He was too self-conscious to be able to give a good shout. ‘Bettisher! I’m caught! The game’s over!’

There was silence a moment, then steps could be heard descending the stairs.

‘Is that you, Dick?’ asked Valentine of the darkness.

‘No, Bettisher.’ The gaiety of the voice did not ring quite true.

‘I’ve been caught,’ said Valentine again, almost as Atalanta might have done, and as though it was a wonderful achievement reflecting great credit upon everybody. ‘Allow me to present you to my captor. No, this is me. We’ve been introduced already.’

It was a moment or two before the mistake was corrected, the two hands groping vainly for each other in the darkness.

‘I expect it will be a disappointment when you see me,’ said Hugh Curtis in the pleasant voice that made many people like him.

‘I want to see you,’ declared Bettisher. ‘I will, too. Let’s have some light.’

‘I suppose it’s no good asking you if you’ve seen Dick?’ inquired Valentine facetiously. ‘He said we weren’t to have any light till the game was finished. He’s so strict with his servants; they have to obey him to the letter. I daren’t even ask for a candle. But you know the faithful Franklin well enough.’

‘Dick will be here in a moment surely,’ Bettisher said, for the first time that day appearing undecided.

They all stood listening.

‘Perhaps he’s gone to dress,’ Curtis suggested. ‘It’s past eight o’clock.’

‘How can he dress in the dark?’ asked Bettisher.

Another pause.

‘Oh, I’m tired of this,’ said Bettisher. ‘Franklin! Franklin!’ His voice boomed through the house and a reply came almost at once from the hall, directly below them. “We think Mr. Munt must have gone to dress,’ said Bettisher. “Will you please turn on the light?’

‘Certainly, sir, but I don’t think Mr. Munt is in his room.’

‘Well, anyhow—’

‘Very good, sir.’

At once the corridor was flooded with light, and to all of them, in greater or less degree according to their familiarity with their surroundings, it seemed amazing that they should have had so much difficulty, half an hour before, in finding their way about. Even Valentine’s harassed emotions experienced a moment’s relaxation. They chaffed Hugh Curtis a little about the false impression his darkling voice had given them. Valentine, as always the more loquacious, swore it seemed to proceed from a large gaunt man with a hare-lip. They were beginning to move towards their rooms, Valentine had almost reached his, when Hugh Curtis called after them:

‘I say, may I be taken to my room?’

‘Of course,’ said Bettisher, turning back. ‘Franklin! Franklin! Franklin, show Mr. Curtis where his room is. I don’t know myself.’ He disappeared and the butler came slowly up the stairs.

‘It’s quite near, sir, at the end of the corridor,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, with having no light we haven’t got your things put out. But it’ll only take a moment.’

The door did not open when he turned the handle.

‘Odd! It’s stuck,’ he remarked: but it did not yield to the pressure of his knee and shoulder. ‘I’ve never known it to be locked before,’ he muttered, thinking aloud, obviously put out by this flaw in the harmony of the domestic arrangements. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll go and fetch my key.’

In a minute or two he was back with it. So gingerly did he turn the key in lock he evidently expected another rebuff; but it gave a satisfactory click and the door swung open with the best will in the world.

‘Now I’ll go and fetch your suitcase,’ he said as Hugh Curtis entered.

‘No, it’s absurd to stay,’ soliloquized Valentine, fumbling feverishly with his front stud, ‘after all these warnings, it would be insane. It’s what they do in a “shocker”, linger on and on, disregarding revolvers and other palpable hints, while one by one the villain picks them off, all except the hero, who is generally the stupidest of all, but the luckiest. No doubt by staying I should qualify to be the hero: I should survive; but what about Hugh, and Bettisher, that close-mouthed rat-trap?’ He studied his face in the glass: it looked flushed. ‘I’ve had an alarming increase in blood-pressure: I am seriously unwell: I must go away at once to a nursing home, and Hugh must accompany me.’ He gazed round wretchedly at the charmingly appointed room, with its chintz and polished furniture, so comfortable, safe, and unsensational. And for the hundredth time his thoughts veered round and blew from the opposite quarter. It would equally be madness to run away at a moment’s notice, scared by what was no doubt only an elaborate practical joke. Munt, though not exactly a jovial man, would have his joke, as witness the game of Hide-and-Seek. No doubt the Travelling Grave itself was just a take-in, a test of his and Bettisher’s credulity. Munt was not popular, he had few friends, but that did not make him a potential murderer. Valentine had always liked him, and no one, to his knowledge, had ever spoken a word against him. “What sort of figure would he, Valentine, cut, after this nocturnal flitting? He would lose at least two friends, Munt and Bettisher, and cover Hugh Curtis and himself with ridicule.

Poor Valentine! So perplexed was he that he changed his mind five times on the way down to the library. He kept repeating to himself the sentence, ‘I’m so sorry, Dick, I find my blood-pressure rather high, and I think I ought to go into a nursing home to-night—Hugh will see me safely there’—until it became meaningless, even its absurdity disappeared.

Hugh was in the library alone. It was now or never; but Valentine’s opening words were swept aside by his friend, who came running across the room to him.

‘Oh, Valentine, the funniest thing has happened.’