"It is just an idea of mine; I took a particular fancy to that holder..... And have you had occasion to put a new point in it lately?"
Doctor Westbrook now did stop. He frowned heavily as he pondered a moment, while the Captain watched him steadily.
"Yes," he presently said. "I placed a new pen-point in it this evening. I found the other broken—bent—quite useless."
"Thank you, thank you," Mr. Converse said, hastily. "Good-night, Doctor Westbrook."
While the Doctor and Mr. Merkel continued on out of the building, Converse devoted his attention to the hall window which opened into the light-well. There he stood until the others had disappeared; whereupon he and Lynden reëntered the Doctor's office.
CHAPTER III
A SEARCH FOR CLUES
By running a board partition down the centre of the room nearest the hall, Doctor Westbrook had by the simplest means given himself a place of reception; one where his patients could wait while he was engaged in the room overlooking Court Street, there being still another for his drugs and medicines.
There was not much wasted space in the laboratory. Against the walls stood cases filled with bottles of many sizes and colors, and other cases displaying glittering, sinister instruments; in one corner stood a carboy of distilled water, and by the window, opening into the light-well, stood the table where the Doctor compounded such prescriptions as he did not send to a regular apothecary.
The light-well opened like a chasm between the Field and Nettleton buildings; its bottom, on a level with the second-story floors, was of heavy semi-opaque glass, so that such rays of light as were not diverted into the windows on the one hand or the other found a way to the shop space on the ground floor. At present an arc lamp beneath this skylight suffused a soft and mellow radiance throughout the entire light-well.