The man held up a dressing-gown and escorted him to an unexpectedly modern bathroom at the end of the corridor.  When Quest returned, his toilet articles were all laid out for him with prim precision; the window was wide open, the blinds drawn, and a soft breeze was stealing through into the room.  Below him, the park, looking more beautiful than ever in the morning sunshine, stretched away to a vista of distant meadowlands and cornfields, with here and there a little farm-house and outbuildings, gathered snugly together.  The servant, who had heard him leave the bathroom, reappeared.

“Is there anything further I can do for you, sir?” he enquired.

“Nothing at all, thanks,” Quest assured him.  “What time’s breakfast?”

“Breakfast is served at nine o’clock, sir.  It is now half-past eight.”

The man withdrew and Quest made a brisk toilet.  The nameless fears of the previous night had altogether disappeared.  To his saner morning imagination, the atmosphere seemed somehow to have become cleared of that cloud of mysterious depression.  He was whistling to himself from sheer light-heartedness as he turned to leave the room.  Then the shock came.  At the last moment he stretched out his hand to take a handkerchief from his satchel.  A sudden exclamation broke from his lips.  He stood for a moment as though turned to stone.  Before him, on the top of the little pile of white cambric, was a small black box!  With a movement of the fingers which was almost mechanical, he removed the lid and drew out the customary little scrap of paper.  He smoothed it out before him on the dressing-case and read the message:—­

    “You will fail here as you have failed before.  Better go back. 
    There is more danger for you in this country than you dream of.”

His teeth came fiercely together and his hands were clenched.  His thoughts had gone like a flash to Lenora.  Was it possible that harm was intended to her?  He put the idea away from him almost as soon as conceived.  The thing was unimaginable.  Craig was here, must be here, in the close vicinity of the house.  He could have had no time to communicate with confederates in London.  Lenora, at any rate, was safe.  Then he glanced around the room and thought for a moment of his own danger.  In the dead of the night, as he had slept, mysterious feet had stolen across his room, mysterious hands had placed those few words of half mocking warning in that simple hiding-place!  It would have been just as easy, he reflected with a grim little smile, for those hands to have stretched their death-dealing fingers over the bed where he had lain asleep.  He looked once more out over the park.  Somehow, its sunny peace seemed to have become disturbed.  The strange sense of foreboding which he, in common with the others, had carried about with him last night, had returned.

The atmosphere of the pleasant breakfast-room to which in due course he descended, was cheerful enough.  Lady Ashleigh had already taken her place at the head of the table before a glittering array of silver tea and coffee equipage.  The Professor, with a plate in his hand, was making an approving survey of the contents of the dishes ranged upon the sideboard.