Then the figure ran lightly across the room,
and as it flashed for a moment through the bar of moonlight, Cleek looked
out from his safe hiding-place and--_saw_! The eyes were narrowed in the
ivory-tinted face, the jaw heavy and undershot as a bull-dog's, while a
dark coloured mustache straggled untidily across the upper lip. The
moonlight, cruelly clear, picked out the point of something sharp that
shone in one clenched hand, something that looked like a knife--that
_was_ a knife.
Then the figure vanished and the door closed noiselessly behind him.
Hmm. So this question of the Frozen Flame was as urgent as all that, was
it? To attempt to murder him, here--in the house of the Squire of
Fetchworth. He wriggled out of his hiding place, a little stiff from
the cramped position he had held, and guardedly lit his candle. Then he
surveyed the bed with set mouth and narrowed eyes. There was a sharp
incision through the clothes, an incision quite three inches long, that
had punctured the pillow which lay beneath them--the pillow that had
saved him his life--and buried itself in the mattress beneath.
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