In the game of life chance is an important factor; and chance, as much as anything else, favoured Cleek in this particular instance, for it was his especial aim to lull Lord St. Ulmer's suspicions of the mysterious "man" and to quiet any fear he might possess of that man's possible connection with the police. It need scarcely be recorded, therefore, that he hastened to second Harry Raynor's suggestion relative to the intruder being nothing more nor less than a sneak thief, who had taken precisely the mode mentioned of making his escape, and backed it up with a panicky sort of appeal to the General to "have the house searched and all the empty rooms below stairs looked into on the off-chance that the fellow hadn't really got away as yet."
The suggestion was acted upon forthwith. Every vacant room was searched, and it was in this matter that chance favoured Cleek so signally, for it was found that a window in one of the lower rooms had been left wide open, and as that window communicated with a veranda, from which a short flight of steps led down to the garden at a point where the walk was asphalted and could not be expected to retain a footprint, there would seem to be no question of where and how the man had made his escape.
Dinner, owing to this interruption, together with the unexpected return of Mr. Harry and the awkward position in which Philip Barch had been placed, was put back for half an hour; and Cleek, left to himself, proceeded to dress himself in the clothes with which young Raynor had supplied him. But for all his cleverness in turning suspicion into another channel, he was not best pleased with the result of the adventure, for he was faced with the fact that he had failed to accomplish what he had set out to do, and that his efforts concerning Lord St. Ulmer had been absolutely barren of results. He had _not_ succeeded in seeing his lordship's face, he had _not_ succeeded in discovering how this man, of all men, should have come into possession of the Jetanola labels, or, indeed, _anything_ that had belonged to Ferdinand Lovetski. Ferdinand Lovetski had been done to death in Paris only seven years ago, and his lordship had been--or was said to have been--more than twice that number of years in Argentina.