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"Can you hear anything?" Dr. Fawcett inquired, a nervous note in his voice.

"I can. Footsteps."

The door was opened. Against dim light in a paved lobby, a gaunt figure appeared, the figure of a man almost as tall as Chief Inspector Firth. He wore what looked, at first sight, like a yellow dressing-gown, but which appeared, on closer inspection, to be a robe of unbleached linen. As Bluett uncompromisingly directed the ray of his torch upon the man's face, his impression that they had disturbed a priest at his devotions was strengthened rather than removed. It was a strange face, that of an aesthete, a scholar, drawn and lined, no more than a pallid frame for large, burning eyes which seemed to change from gray to blue. This man was so blond that it was hard to tell if his hair, grown unfashionably long and brushed back from a brow almost Shakespearian in contour, was very fair or nearly white. He wore a slight moustache which drooped at the ends. Save for the fire which burned in his eyes, he was strangely, almost unnaturally composed.