“Unless somebody has suckers on his hands and feet, like the Human Fly, there’s no way out here,” I reported, withdrawing my head.

“But that’s impossible. I tell you I was in the corridor within seconds of the time I heard him scream. Nobody could have come out that door without my seeing him.”

“And I,” said a cool voice, “was in the corridor when Herr Schmidt cried out. No one left his room.”

The speaker was the Gräfin. Blankenhagen was with her. He was fully dressed, of course; I wondered what kind of emergency it would take to get Blankenhagen out of his room without his pants. He bent over Schmidt. Then he flew into violent action, stripping the clothes from the little man’s chest and fumbling in his bag for a hypodermic.

“The man is not dead. Telephone to the hospital. We must have an ambulance as quickly as possible. Run!”

The Gräfin obeyed. She didn’t run, but she moved fast. The rest of us stared blankly at one another.

“You said he was dead.” I looked accusingly at George.

“I thought he was.” George was badly shaken. “He sure looked dead. I couldn’t help—”

“Nobody’s blaming you,” I said, more mildly. “Doctor, can we do anything?”

“You can go,” said Blankenhagen, without looking up. “All of you. Out of here.”

So we left. But I sat in my room with the door open till the ambulance arrived and took Schmidt away. The doctor went with him. Then I closed and locked my door and, remembering the interchangeable keys of the Schloss, I wedged a chair under the handle.

I was glad Schmidt wasn’t dead. I rather liked the old guy, despite the fact that I would not have been willing to stake my life on his honesty. In fact, I had been willing to consider him a prime suspect. His earlier attack hadn’t put me off the scent; the suggestion of invalidism was a good alibi in a case where the villain displayed such startling agility. But this attack couldn’t have been faked. Unless…

I had already considered the idea that there were two villains. Tony’s encounter with the armor was particularly significant. Blankenhagen had suggested that Tony had hit his head when he fell, but I had seen that neat round lump behind his ear, and the word that came to my mind was “blackjack.” If someone had been waiting for Tony in the darkness under the stairs, and had knocked him out, it would explain a lot of things.

It began to look more and more like Blankenhagen. If Schmidt’s heart attack tonight was a fake, only the doctor could back him up in his pretense. Yet in that case would Blankenhagen risk taking Schmidt to a hospital, with a whole staff of doctors and interns?

It looked less like Blankenhagen.