III
It was nine o'clock the next morning when Trotter, carrying a parcel of laundry, walked casually past the First National Trust Building and turned the corner. He also made note, as he stepped into the open-fronted Chinese laundry, of this incongruous side-street neighbor, its squalid meanness cheek by jowl with the lordly magnificence of the many-columned bank structure.
On a narrow-fronted ground floor was the crowded little laundry with its red-lettered sign, its uncurtained windows, its shelves of red-tagged parcels, and its ever-present odor of borax. Below this was a basement, a cellar as narrow and dark as a cistern. A flight of perilously inclined steps led to the door of this basement. This door, in turn, was glass-fronted, but protected by a heavy woven-wire grating. On it was a sign which read:
"J. HEENEY. PLUMBING, WIRING AND ELECTRIC SUPPLIES."
It was this basement which so inordinately interested Trotter. He essayed several mild inquiries, in handing his frugal parcel of washing over the Chinaman's counter, as to the occupant of the cellar below. About "J. Heeney," however, he discovered nothing beyond the fact that he had occupied the cellar for several months. Trotter did not want to arouse unnecessary suspicion by overinterrogating "J. Heeney's" neighbors.
So he went mildly back to his top-floor room, and sat down and tried to study things out. As he sat there wrapped in thought, his idly wandering gaze rested on the electric bell above the door. He looked at it for several seconds. Then he stood on a chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper, wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry. He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps. He wanted nothing to escape his notice.
He found the wire-screened door at the bottom locked. But he could get a clear enough view of the interior, even through the dirty glass. The entire space within was not more than ten feet wide and eight feet deep. It held a litter of plumber's tools, a few lengths of gas piping, a row of batteries, a blowpipe, a small hand-forge, a couple of porcelain washbowls, a deal table and chair and what seemed to be an electric transformer in a sadly battered case.
Across the back of the shop ran a wooden partition, plainly shutting off the main part of the cellar. In this partition, Trotter's careful scrutiny discovered, stood a narrow door. He ached to know what lay behind that door and that partition. But he had to be content with the shallower shop front. So he was not hurried in his inspection of it. It was not until he had fixed the details of the entire place in his mind that he ventured to knock.
There was no answer to his knock. Yet it was plain that some one was inside, for he could see the key in the lock, through the dirty glass. Who that person was he intended to find out.
He was rattling the wire fretwork, impatiently, loudly, when the partition door swung open.
Through this door stepped a short and extremely broad-shouldered man. There was no trace of annoyance on his face. In fact, much to Trotter's vague disappointment, he was smiling, smiling easily and broadly. He wore a workman's jumper, stained with oil and iron rust, and in his hand he carried a large pair of pipe tongs. But these did not interest Trotter. What caught his eye was the fact that the man's boots were white with lime dust.
"Hold on, sister; hold on!" said the man, with a laugh, for Trotter was still rattling the door. The owner stepped across his shop and turned the key in the lock.
"Hard to hear when I'm in doin' my lathe work," he explained, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. All the while, as he swung back the door, his eyes were closely studying the eyes of the other man. Trotter noticed the row of matches stuck in the soiled hatband, and the cotton bag of "Durham" that swung from his sweat-stained belt.
"What can I do for you, sister?" was his companionable greeting.
Trotter unwrapped his electric bell.
"Can you give me a clapper for this?" he asked.
The other man took the bell in his hand. Trotter could see powdered lime under his nails.
"I guess I can fix you out," said the shop owner. "Wait a minute."
He turned to the door in the partition, and disappeared from sight, closing the door after him.
Trotter's first decision had been to take the key from the outer door lock. But some sixth sense made him hesitate, prompted him to turn and look at the inner door.
His stare was rewarded by the discovery of a hole in this door, about five feet from the floor. It was a lookout; he felt sure he was being watched. So he thrust his hands into his pockets, gazed carelessly about the shop, and waited.
The man reappeared, shaking his head.
"Nothing doing," he said. He was not able to fit a clapper to the bell.
"But I thought you kept electric supplies here," objected
Trotter.
The other man smiled. His good nature was impregnable.
"Oh, I can get it, if you've got to have it. Come back about ten to-morrow."
"All right," was Trotter's indifferent answer, as he turned languidly away. He went up the steps with equal languor, humming as he went.