light, rooms with chandeliers hanging in big bags from the high
ceilings, rooms whose walls were alive with pictures, rooms whose
walls were deadened with rows on rows of old books, state
bedrooms in whose great plumed four-posters Queen Elizabeth
had no doubt slept. (That Queen, by the way, must have been very
little at home, for she seems to have slept in every old house in
England.) But he could not find the kitchen. At last a door opened
on stone steps that went up there was a narrow stone passage steps
that went down a door with a light under it. It was, somehow,
difficult to put out one's hand to that door and open it.

"Nonsense!" Gerald told himself, "don't be an ass! Are you
invisible, or aren't you?"

Then he opened the door, and someone inside said something in a
sudden rough growl.

Gerald stood back, flattened against the wall, as a man sprang to
the doorway and flashed a lantern into the passage.

"All right," said the man, with almost a sob of relief. "It was only
the door swung open, it's that heavy that's all."

"Blow the door!" said another growling voice; "blessed if I didn't
think it was a fair cop that time."

They closed the door again. Gerald did not mind. In fact, he rather
preferred that it should be so. He didn't like the look of those men.
There was an air of threat about them. In their presence even
invisibility seemed too thin a disguise. And Gerald had seen as