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Blore sat on his bed, his brow furrowed, his little eyes creased and puckered while he pondered the problem of the revolver…

In the silence he could hear the clocks strike downstairs.

Midnight.

He relaxed a little now—even went so far as to lie down on his bed. But he did not undress.

He lay there thinking. Going over the whole business from the beginning, methodically, painstakingly, as he had been wont to do in his police officer days. It was thoroughness that paid in the end.

The candle was burning down. Looking to see if the matches were within easy reach of his hand, he blew it out.

Strangely enough, he found the darkness disquieting. It was as though a thousand age-old fears woke and struggled for supremacy in his brain. Faces floated in the air—the judge’s face crowned with that mockery of grey wool—the cold dead face of Mrs Rogers—the convulsed purple face of Anthony Marston.

Another face—pale, spectacled, with a small straw-coloured moustache.

A face that he had seen sometime or other—but when? Not on the island. No, much longer ago than that.

Funny that he couldn’t put a name to it… Silly sort of face really—fellow looked a bit of a mug.

Of course!

It came to him with a real shock.

Landor!

Odd to think he’d completely forgotten what Landor looked like. Only yesterday he’d been trying to recall the fellow’s face, and hadn’t been able to.

And now here it was, every feature clear and distinct, as though he had seen it only yesterday.

Landor had had a wife—a thin slip of a woman with a worried face. There’d been a kid, too, a girl about fourteen. For the first time, he wondered what had become of them.

(The revolver. What had become of the revolver? That was much more important.)

The more he thought about it the more puzzled he was… He didn’t understand this revolver business.

Somebody in the house had got that revolver…

Downstairs a clock struck one.

Blore’s thoughts were cut short. He sat up on the bed, suddenly alert. For he had heard a sound—a very faint sound— somewhere outside his bedroom door.

There was someone moving about in the darkened house.

The perspiration broke out on his forehead. Who was it, moving secretly and silently along the corridors? Someone who was up to no good, he’d bet that!

Noiselessly, in spite of his heavy build, he dropped off the bed and with two strides was standing by the door listening.

But the sound did not come again. Nevertheless Blore was convinced that he was not mistaken. He had heard a footfall just outside his door. The hair rose slightly on his scalp. He knew fear again…

Someone creeping about stealthily in the night.

He listened—but the sound was not repeated.

And now a new temptation assailed him. He wanted, desperately, to go out and investigate. If he could only see who it was prowling about in the darkness.

But to open his door would be the action of a fool. Very likely that was exactly what the other was waiting for. He might even have meant Blore to hear what he had heard, counting on him coming out to investigate.