At the end of a half-hour, silence reigning throughout the house, he rose.
He crept softly into Charlot's chamber and possessed himself of the Captain's outer garments.

These he carried back to the sitting-room, and extracted from the coat pocket two huge keys tied together with a piece of string.

He never doubted that they were the keys he sought, one opening the stable door and the other the gates of the porte-cochere.
He replaced the garments, and then to make doubly sure, he waited yet--in a fever of impatience--another half-hour by his watch.
It wanted a few minutes to midnight when, taking up his cloak and a lantern he had lighted, he went below once more.

In the common-room he found precisely the scene he had expected.

Both Charlot's men and his own followers lay about the floor in all conceivable manner of attitudes, their senses locked deep in the drunken stupor that possessed them.