The room, or office, as has been written, was impregnable to any but an assault in force, the doors invincible save by the shattering crash of high explosive, the windows almost equally so.
Quarrier’s man, Harrison, even, would be unable to enter the room in his employer’s absence; so that, knowing the combination of the safe, he could take nothing from it, or bring anything into it. He left, in the rare intervals that Quarrier suffered his ministrations, always with his master, returning likewise, if he returned at all, in Quarrier’s company.
The recluse had hedged himself about with care. Marston, with his keen, devising brain, would face a pretty problem in the recovery of those documents.
But it was when, on an abrupt inspiration, Quarrier removed the telephone receiver from its hook, that he became certain that it was a trap.
“Give me Schuyler 9000,” he had whispered, his voice hoarse in the blanketing silence. But even with the words he knew that the line was dead, yet it was characteristic of Quarrier that, once satisfied that this was so, he resumed his inventory of the office where he had left off.
He had completed the circuit of the chamber with the exception of the wall safe and the small, flat-topped writing-desk by the door. From his position he could see the desk quite easily; there was nothing and nobody either on or under it. And now, before he twirled the combination, he laid his hand upon the doors, pulling at the handles in a perfunctory testing. And then--
He recoiled, stumbling backward, as the doors swung wide with a jarring _clang_. Fingers trembling, he jerked forward a drawer--put in his hand. He withdrew it--empty. Confronted with the incredible truth--the thing which he had feared and yet had not believed--he stood, stunned. _For the documents had vanished!_
Even in the midst of his excitement and dismay, Quarrier permitted himself the ghost of a faint, wintry grin. But a few hours before he had himself bestowed those papers in their particular resting-place, and, observing a precaution to make assurance doubly sure, he had stationed a guard at the street level, men whom he could trust. For, in the morning he had meant to transfer those documents to that repository in the West Eighties from which Marston would never be able to retrieve them, for with their receipt would come the final quietus of the President of Intervale Steel. And that was why Quarrier had called that number, which had not answered.
Now the documents were gone and Marston was safe. But there remained a final thin thread of hope, and it was this:
The building, a new one, stood alone; Quarrier owned it; his enemies had in some obscure fashion obtained that which they sought. And--this being so--they were in the building.
Quarrier’s orders to that guard had not included the stoppage or detention of any seeking ingress. On entering, he had been informed merely that perhaps half a dozen, all told, had possibly preceded him. They had trapped him--perhaps they might even succeed in expunging him from the record together with the evidence, but they--Marston and the rest--some or all of them were in the building; they _had_ to be.
He grinned again, a swift, tigerish grin, as he considered the trifling clue which had betrayed them. But for that he would never have discovered the looting of the safe.
And it was then, as he stood, turned a little from the safe and facing the heavy door giving on the lumber-room, that he straightened, tense, bending to the keyhole.
The door was sound-proof, as were the walls, but abruptly, as a sound heard in dreams, he had heard it: At the keyhole, a sound, or the shadow of a sound, faint and thin, but unmistakable, like the beating of a heart.
And that sound had gone on, faint and thin, as though muffled through layers of cotton wool, persistent, regular--the faint, scarce-audible ticking of a watch.
For a moment, even while he considered and dismissed the thought that they might have planted a time-bomb against that door, Quarrier hesitated. And then, abruptly, he knew: They were in the lumber-room; he had surprised them; doubtless they waited, hidden, for his exit. He had been too quick for them; they had not counted on his escape from that cellar, and if that were so, he, Quarrier, would have something to say as to their getaway.
Silent, his automatic ready, he had opened the door into the corridor with a slow, stealthy caution. Then he was in the corridor, searching the thick-piled shadows, where, at the far end, a light hung between floor and ceiling like a star. A silence held, thick, heavy, mournful, daunting, as he began his advance--a silence burdened with a tide of threat, sinister, whispering, alive.
Just ahead of him was the first of the great batteries of elevators. A pressure upon the call-bell, and in a moment he would have with him men upon whom he could rely, men who would execute his least order without question. And then, remembering, he desisted.
For he found it easy to believe that the same agency which had silenced his telephone might have cut him off here also from communication, but his finger, reaching for the signal, jerked backward, as, out of the corner of his eye, he beheld a lance of light spring suddenly from the crusted transom of the lumber-room door.
Were they coming out?
“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat.
He did not pause to consider how many of them there might be, or that his faithful guardians of the gate, thirty stories below, were probably silenced by the same sinister hand.
Silently, his gun held rigid as a rock, he approached the lumber-room door; then, a step away, he paused, with a sharp intake of his breath.
Here, six paces at his left, a narrow corridor led to a fire-alarm box and a window directly overlooking the main entrance and the street. Quarrier, back to the wall, thrust up a groping hand to where, just above his head, a light cluster hung. Three of the bulbs he unscrewed; then, going to the window, opened it, leaned outward, and, with intervals between, dropped them downward into the dark.
Then, pistol in hand, his feet silent upon the concrete flooring of the corridor, he approached the lumber-room door.
On hands and knees, he listened a moment at the keyhole; then, still on his knees, his fingers, reaching, turned the knob, slowly, with an infinite caution, in his face new creases, grim lines. His face bitter, bleak, mouth hard, he straightened, got to his feet, thrust inward the heavy door with one lightning movement; stepped into the lumber-room, his gun, swung in a short arc, covering the two who faced him across the intervening space.
“Those documents, Marston,” he commanded bruskly, “I can--use them.”
His gaze, for a fleeting instant, turned to the other man, who, hands clenched at his sides, his eyes wide with sudden terror and unbelief, stared dumbly at the apparition in the doorway.
But Marston, his face gray, his hand hidden in his pocket, shrugged, sneered wryly, his hand thrust out and upward with the speed of light.
But, for the difference between time and eternity, he was not quick enough. There came a double report, roaring almost as one: Marston’s sneer blurred to a stiff, frozen grimace; he swayed, leaning forward, his face abruptly blank; then, in a slumping fall, he crashed downward to the floor.
Quarrier stooped, swept up the papers where they had fallen from the dead man’s pocket; then he turned curtly upon his body-servant.
“You may go, Harrison,” he said, as if dismissing the man casually at the end of his day’s service.
But if Harrison felt any gratitude for the implied reprieve, he turned now to Quarrier with an eager gesture, his speech broken, agonized:
“He--you must listen, sir--Mr. Quarrier,” he begged. “He--Mr. Marston--he knew me when--he knew about....”
His voice broke, faltered.
“Well--?” asked Quarrier, coldly, his face expressionless.
“Mr. Marston,” continued the man--“he knew--my record--I was afraid to tell you, sir. He--he found out, somehow, that I’d--been--done time, sir.... He scared me, I’ll admit--he threatened me--threatened to tell you.... You didn’t know, of course....”
“Yes--I _knew_,” explained Quarrier, simply, and at the expression in his master’s face the valet’s own glowed suddenly as if lighted from within.
“You--_knew_--” he murmured.
_VI._
Chain of Circumstance.
“But there is one thing you can tell me,” Quarrier was saying. “You had the combination of the safe, of course; we’ll say nothing more about that--but--how did you get in?”
Harrison bent his head.
“Well, sir,” he explained, after a moment, “it was simple, but I’d never have thought of it but for--him.” He pointed to the silent figure on the floor.
“Well--there are just three doors, sir, as you know,” he resumed. “The entrance door of your office, with the combination lock; the entrance door of the lumber-room here, both giving on the corridor; and the inside door between the lumber-room and your office. We couldn’t get into the office by the entrance door from the hall on account of the combination lock, but we could and did get into the lumber-room easily enough from the corridor--the door’s not even locked, as you know, sir. And that’s how we got into the private office--from the lumber-room, here, through the door between.”