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window. Somewhere in that ten feet we've got to find the spring."

"Good heavens!" said Gordon suddenly, "suppose there's a sliding panel."

"A man couldn't get through one of these panels⁠—not even you, Gordon, in your well-known human-cobra act," said Reeves, who had stopped singing for the moment.

"No, but a man might put his arm through it, and take the photograph away, and put another in its place, while the people in the room were closely occupied⁠—arranging their hands at bridge, for example."

"You've got it!" said Carmichael. "But why, why?" He and Gordon both went to the spot where the photograph had rested on the cornice two nights before. There was a crack near it, through which it might be possible for a man standing in the dark beyond to keep a watch on the inside of the room, but this crack seemed to hold no further secret. It was Gordon who eventually, fingering the little mouldings on the lower side of the cornice, found one which pushed upwards, acting as a sort of latch. A little tug at the remaining mouldings made the panel turn sideways and disclose a triangular opening of a few inches across, through which Reeves' vociferous rendering of "Annie Laurie" burst into the stillness of the priests' hiding-place.