The key was not in the lock.

I knelt down, and looked through the keyhole.

The next instant, I was up again on my feet, wild and giddy with horror.
"Burst open the door!" I screamed.

"I can just see his hand lying on the floor!" The landlord, like the rector, was a little man; and the door, like everything else at Browndown, was of the clumsiest and heaviest construction.

Unaided by instruments, we should all three together have been too weak to burst it open.