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Smith held the light with a steady hand, whilst Kennedy forced the heavy bolts of the crypt door. In leapt the fearless baronet among his savage pets, and in the ray of light from the electric lamp I saw that which turned my sick with horror. Prone beside a yawning gap in the floor lay Homopoulo, his throat torn indescribably and his white shirt-front smothered in blood.
His dark face was blanched to the hue of dirty parchment and his forehead dewed with cold perspiration. I mentally predicted an early resignation in the household of Sir Lionel Barton. Homopoulo might be an excellent butler, but his superstitious Greek nature was clearly incapable of sustaining existence beneath the same roof with a family ghost, hoary though the specter's antiquity might be.
The old lady admitted the existence of the tradition which Nayland Smith had in some way unearthed, but assured us that never, in her time, had the uneasy spirit declared himself. As for Homopoulo, hitherto so irreproachably imperturbable, I had rarely seen a man in such a state of passive panic.
Magnus, in the village. He came at once and I showed him up to your room. He sent Mrs. Oram out, leaving only Homopoulo and myself there, except yourself." "Well?" "Sandbagged!" explained the man nonchalantly. "Dr. Magnus, who is some kind of dago, is evidently one of the gang." "Sir Lionel!" cried Smith "where does the passage lead to beyond that doorway?
Three months ago a Greek gentleman possibly, Sir Lionel, your late butler, Homopoulo obtained permission to consult the MS., claiming to be engaged upon a paper for some review or another. "At any rate, the fact was sufficient. Quite evidently, a servant of Fu-Manchu had obtained a copy of the plan and this within a day or so of the death of Mr. Brangholme Burton whose heir, Sir Lionel, you were!
Truly it was a singular situation, and I am unlikely ever to forget the scene as the three of us solemnly rose to our feet and drank our host's toast, thus proposed by proxy, under the eye of Homopoulo, who stood a shadowy figure in the background. The ceremony solemnly performed and the gloomy butler having departed with a suitable message to Sir Lionel
Heedless of what, of whom, else it might shelter, we sprang for the group in the distant doorway. A memory is mine of the dark, white face of Homopoulo, peering, wild-eyed, over the lantern, of the slim, white-clad form of the lovely captive seeming to fade into the obscurity of th passage beyond.
A deadly nausea overcame me ... and a deadly doubt leapt to my mind. In the past, Sir Lionel Barton had had spies in his household; what if the dark-faced Greek, Homopoulo, were another of these? I thought of the '45 port, of the ghostly rapping; and I thought of the man who crouched upon the roof of the tower above my open window.
Sir Lionel Barton's penchant for strange visitors, of which we had had experience in the past, was exemplified in the person of Homopoulo. It was during this expedition that the death of a distant relative had made him master of Graywater Park; and the event seemingly had inspired the eccentric baronet to engage a suitable factotum.
It was at a late hour that we had separated, and none of us, I think, welcomed the breaking up of our little party. Mrs. Oram, the housekeeper, had been closely questioned by Smith for Homopoulo, as a new-comer, could not be expected to know anything of the history of Graywater Park.
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