It was dark here, to--and yet, how bizarre, a star seemed to twinkle through the very roof of the room itself! The odour was pungent now.

There was a long-drawn sigh--then a low, indescribable sound of movement.

SOMEBODY, APART FROM OLD LUDDY, WAS IN THE ROOM! It swept, the full consciousness of it, upon Jimmie Dale in an instantaneous flash.

Chloroform; the open scuttle in the roof; the waiting of those others--all fused into a compact logical whole.

They had loosened the scuttle during the day, probably when old Luddy was away--one of them had crept down there now to chloroform the old man into insensibility--the others would complete the ghastly work presently by stringing their victim up to the ceiling--and it would be suicide, for, long before morning came, long before the old man would be discovered, the fumes of the chloroform would be gone.
It seemed like a cold hand, deathlike, clutching at his heart.