"According to Madame de Stämer he went to bed several hours ago, you may remember."
"True," I murmured, fumbling for the significance of his words.
"The next point is this," he resumed. "You saw Madame retire to her own room, which, as you know, is on the ground floor, and I have satisfied myself that the door communicating with the servants' wing is locked."
"I see. But to what is all this leading, Harley?"
"To a very curious fact, and the fact is this: The Colonel is not alone."
"My dear fellow, we must face facts. I repeat, the Colonel is not alone."
"Twice I have seen a shadow on the blind of the smoke-room."
Again Paul Harley's cigarette glowed in the darkness.
"I am prepared to swear," he replied, "that it was the shadow of a woman."
"Don't get excited, Knox. I am dealing with the strangest case of my career, and I am jumping to no conclusions. But just let us look at the circumstances judicially. The whole of the domestic staff we may dismiss, with the one exception of Mrs. Fisher, who, so far as I can 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 Stämer, unassisted, could not possibly have mounted the stairs."
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."