So 'Phemie turned again, after a moment, and lifted the latch. Then she pushed tentatively on the door, and----
'Phemie gasped--an appalling sound it seemed in the stillness of the corridor and at that hour of the night.
Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as she passed it while working about the house. It had been securely locked.
Then, she told herself now, on the instant, the key had been found and it had been put to use. Somebody had already been in the old doctor's offices and had ransacked the rooms.
She crossed the threshold swiftly and groped her way to the door of the second room--the old doctor's consulting room. Here the light of the moon filtered through the shutters sufficiently to show her the place.
There seemed to be nobody there, and she stepped in, leaving the green door open behind her, but pulling shut the door between the anteroom and the office.
There was the old doctor's big desk, and the bookcases all about the room, and the jars with "specimens" in them and--yes!--the skeleton case in the corner.
She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling, then upon the wall, of the old doctor's office.
'Phemie's heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody--the person who had found the lost key--still in the offices of the east wing.
The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light from the rear doorway.
Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton. Indeed, she hid in its shadow.
And her interest in that moving light--and the person behind it--made her forget her original terror of what was in the box.
She heard a rustle--then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room in which she was hidden.
Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected. It was Professor Spink.