He moved his head, slowly, carefully, like a man testing himself for an invisible hurt. And then--
“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat, the shadow of a cry. For, moving an inch further to the right, it would have been a noose, tightening as he moved, strangling him there, choking him out of sound and sense.
Brave as he was, Quarrier shivered, his shoulders twitching with the thought. And it was not cold. Moving with an infinite caution, he ran his exploring fingers along the hempen strands.
Whoever had devised that noose had been a sailor. And only a sailor could undo it.
And there in the dark, trussed as he was, at the mercy of what other peril he knew not. Quarrier permitted himself the ghost of a grin. His hand went up, slowly, carefully, the fingers busy with the rope; there came a tug, and, coiling at his feet like a snake, the noose slid slithering along the stones.
Quarrier was not a praying man, in the ordinary sense, but now he sent heavenward a silent aspiration of gratitude for the impulse which, years previous, had prompted his signing on as a foremast hand in the China seas. And the long hours in the doldrums, below the line, had, as it proved, been anything but wasted.
Now, easing his cramped muscles in a preliminary stretching, he rose gingerly to his feet, moving with the stealth and caution of an Indian. He was free of that constricting rope, but as he moved forward, groping, just ahead there came to him a sudden murmur of voices, low, like the growling of savage beasts. There was that sort of note in it: A fierce, avid mutter, and presently, as he advanced, he made out here and there a word.
“Th’ Big Gun.... You better watch your step.... Mar--”
Quarrier found himself in a sort of corridor, at the far end of which proceeded the voices. It had all been done in the dark, so to speak. The taxi, that driver with the face familiar and yet unfamiliar, the attack, and now this. But time pressed. Why they had not murdered him out of hand he did not pause to consider; he knew only that Marston--and he was certain that it was Marston’s hand that had been in it--would, with a clear field, be at the hiding-place of those documents. Even now, doubtless, he was there.
Quarrier felt mechanically for his pistol; and then his hand dropped hopelessly as he remembered that he was weaponless.
He listened tensely, holding his breath, as the voices receded--or, rather, one of them; he could hear the other following the departing man with his complaints.
Evidently they had left a guard of two. One of them was going; the other left behind, and not especially delighted with his job.
An abrupt turn of the long hallway brought this man suddenly into plain view.
Quarrier blinked in the glare from the single incandescent, flattening himself against the wall; then, with a pantherish pace, he had covered the intervening space in three lunging strides.
The man, a broad fellow with a seamed, lead-colored countenance, turned his head; his mouth opened, his hand going to his pocket with a lightning stab of the blunt, hairy fingers.
But Quarrier had wasted no time. Even as the giant reached for his gun Quarrier’s fist swung in a short arc, and there was power in it. The blow, traveling a scant six inches, crashed full on the point; the thick-set man, his eyes glazing, swayed, slipped, fell in an aimless huddle.
“Well--a knockout!” panted Quarrier, reaching for the pistol.
Marston was the “Big Gun”, of course. Quarrier had never doubted it; but hitherto the President of Intervale Steel had conducted his brokerage business, on the surface at any rate, without resort to open violence. And Intervale Steel--You knew really nothing about it until you took a flyer in it; then, as it might chance, you knew enough and more than enough.
Quarrier, glancing at the unconscious man and pocketing the pistol, departed without more ado; proceeding along the hall, he found, with no further adventure, a narrow door, and the pale stars, winking at him from, he judged, a midnight horizon.
But a glance at his watch told him that it was but nine-thirty; there was yet time to get to the hiding-place of those documents ahead of Marston, if, as he was now convinced, it had been Marston’s thugs who had ambushed him.
Plunging along the shadowy alley, after five minutes’ walk, made at a racing gait, he found a main-traveled avenue and an owl taxi, whose driver, leaning outward, crooked a finger in invitation to this obvious fare, appearing out of the dark.
Quarrier did not hesitate. The fellow might be a gunman or worse; he must take his chance of that.
“Twenty-three Jones!” he called crisply, with the words diving into the cab’s interior; then, his head out of the window, as the taxi turned outward from the curb:
“And drive as if all hell were after you!”
_III._
The Shape Invisible.
Quarrier reached his destination without incident, but as he went up the winding stairway of the office building to his private sanctum he was oppressed by an uneasy sense that all was not as it should be. Those elevators--they were seldom out of order. Perhaps....
But, panting a little from his climb, he found his floor, and the door of his private office.
For just a split second he hesitated; then, unlocking the door, he flung it wide and went in.
And then, for the third time that evening, he had another shock: for, almost from the moment of his entry into that sound-proof chamber, he knew that he was not alone.
For a moment, there in the blaze from the electrolier, lighted by the opening of the door, he stood rigid, listening, holding his breath; crouched, bent forward like a sprinter upon his mark.
Quarrier was a big man, and well muscled; in his day he had been an amateur boxer of repute. For a big man, he was quick, well-poised, supple and controlled.
A brain of ice and nerves of steel--that was Quarrier. And at that moment he stood in need of them.
He had heard nothing, felt nothing, seen nobody--and yet he knew, beyond any possibility of doubt, that someone or _something_ was with him there in that sound-proof chamber, thirty stories above the street. And the knowledge--as certain as the fact that he, Quarrier, as yet lived and breathed--the knowledge that he was not alone was not reassuring. It was fantastic, it was incredible--but it was _true_!
Everything in that private office was in plain sight; shelter there was none for any possible intruder; and yet, by the very positive evidence of his eyes he knew, and his pulses quickened at the thought, that he was not alone.
It had been Quarrier’s fancy to rent the small suite on the top floor of the out-of-the-way office building. He liked the view; the rooms were remote; they suited his purpose; they were private. Anything could happen here, and no one be the wiser: the crash of a heavy .45, for instance, would not penetrate an inch outward beyond those sound-proof walls. And a cry, a shout would be lost there just as a stone is lost, dropped downward into a deep well of silence--and of oblivion.
Now, if Quarrier’s man, Harrison, a soft-footed, super-efficient body-servant, had not kept on his hat; or if, say, he had not had a particularly abundant shock of hair, added to the fact that although an excellent servant, he was somewhat deaf; and if, too, he had not, for once, walked and worked in deviousness--this chronicle would have had a very different ending--for Quarrier, at any rate.
His hand in the pocket of his coat, the fingers curled about the butt of the automatic that he had taken from the guard back there in the cellar, Quarrier, frowning, surveyed the room in a slow, searching appraisal. Those documents--he had to make certain of them.
From left to right, as his gaze went round the chamber, he saw a book-case, a full-length canvas, done in oils, the double windows, a door, locked with a huge, old-fashioned key, leading into a lumber-room just beyond, a small wall safe, his desk--which completed the circle.
The room was in itself a safe. It was like a fort: The windows were protected by sheet-steel aprons similar to the burglar-guards used by bank tellers; the main entrance door, through which Quarrier had entered, and which opened upon the corridor and the elevators, was of steel, with a patent spring combination lock; the other door, leading to the lumber-room, was also of steel, locked, however, with a huge, old-fashioned key, but this latter door had never been in use since Quarrier’s occupancy.
Nothing short of an acetylene blowpipe could have penetrated the walls, the ceiling, the floor, but they were smooth, unmarred by scratch or tell-tale stain.
Now, to understand events as they occurred:
Quarrier was in his private sanctum, his office; it adjoined the lumber-room at the right. And a simple diagram may serve perhaps better than a page of explanation:
[Illustration]
The electrolier, blazing from its four nitro lamps, illumined every nook and cranny of that office; shed its blazing effulgence upon Quarrier, standing like a graven image before that wall safe. And as he stood there, for the first time in his well-ordered existence a prey to fear, a face rose out of his consciousness; he heard again the voice of Marston, President of Intervale Steel: