I suddenly remembered that the clicking door latch beside me implied that my entrance was being automatically solicited. I stepped into the dimly lighted hall and made my way determinedly up the narrow carpeted stairs, knowing I would get face to face with Creegan if I had to crawl through a fanlight and pound in his bedroom door.
But it was Creegan himself who confronted me as I swung about the banister turn of that shadowy second landing.
"You wake those kids up," he solemnly informed me, "and I'll kill you!"
"Creegan," I cried, and it seemed foolish that I should have to inveigle and coax him into a crusade which meant infinitely more to him than to me, "I'm going to make you famous!"
"How soon?" he diffidently inquired.
"Inside of two hours' time," was my answer.
"Don't wake those kids!" he commanded, looking back over his shoulder.
I caught him by the sleeve, and held him there, for some vague premonition of a sudden withdrawal and a bolted door made me desperate. And time, I knew, was getting short.
"For heaven's sake, listen to me," I said as I held him. And as he stood there under the singing gas-jet, with his hurriedly lit and skeptically tilted stogie in one corner of his mouth, I told him in as few words as I could what had happened that night.
"Come in while I get me boots on," he quietly remarked, leading me into an unlighted hallway and from that into a bedroom about the size of a ship's cabin. "And speak low," he said, with a nod toward the rear end of the hall. Then as he sat on the edge of the bed pulling on his shoes he made me recount everything for the second time, stopping me with an occasional question, fixing me occasionally with a cogitative eye.