Thank God I ran across you." Cleek smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away; then, hearing the other gentlemen coming down the stairs, he, too, made haste to get out of the room and to creep up to his own after they had assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody's victim.
* * * * * The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound save that which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleek's room swung quietly open, and Cleek himself, in dressing-gown and wadded bedroom slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving Dollops on guard, passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet.
The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of Philip Bawdrey himself, opened upon this.

He went to each in turn, unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom candle.
The sleeping-draught had accomplished all that was required of it; and in each and every room he entered--Captain Travers's, Lieutenant Forshay's, Mr.Robert Murdock's--there lay the occupant thereof stretched out at full length in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep which comes of drugs.
Cleek made the round of the rooms as quietly as any shadow, even stopping as he passed young Bawdrey's on his way back to his own to peep in there.

Yes; he, too, had got his share of the effective draught, for there he lay snarled up in the bed-clothes, with his arms over his head and his knees drawn up until they were on a level with his waist, and his handsome, boyish face a little paler than usual.
Cleek didn't go into the room, simply looked at him from the threshold, then shut the door, and went back to Dollops.
"All serene, Gov'nor ?" questioned that young man, in an eager whisper.
"Yes, quite," his master replied, as he turned to a writing-table whereon there lay a sealed note, and, pulling out the chair, sat down before it and took up a pen.

"Wait a bit, and then you can go to bed.
I'll give you still another note to deliver.

While I'm writing it you may lay out my clothes." "Slipping off, sir ?" "Yes.