That was a slot—rather a series of slots—cut through the pipe behind the cap on the right wall. You couldn’t see them from the front; you hardly could see them when you pressed cheek to the wall but you could feel them top, bottom and sides of the pipe cut through, leaving just enough metal to hold the cap in place; and freshly cut; for the edges were sharp to your fingers and shining to your eyes. But of course every scrap and shaving of the metal had been cleaned away. The pipe behind the cap back of an etching on the opposite wall was exactly like this.
“It was to come that way, I guess,” I said carefully to Teverson.
“Was?” he repeated as carefully. “What makes you think it isn’t yet to come? Not in the middle of our meeting now, but to whoever is here, which means you and me.” But he did not move away; instead, he walked to the window and stood there looking down. I glanced down too and into Wall Street and got a glimpse of that part which seemed particularly to bear a message for us this morning—that strip between Morgan’s offices and the sub-treasury where people were peacefully passing and feeling absolutely secure that summer noon, not so long ago, when without warning at all that infernal no-one-yet-knows-what went off and did what nobody about Wall Street will ever forget.
Of course, what had strewed the street had been gathered up and the pavement repaired and flushed and swept and the buildings restored long ago; yet this neighborhood wasn’t precisely the best spot to disregard a threat of terrorism,—especially when you’ve found ancestral gas pipes freshly chiselled for no use you wish to put them to.
“We’ve expected trouble from radicals about this stage in our foreign financing, Fanneal,” Teverson said to me. “We’ve guarded Géroud and Strathon from the minute they passed quarantine; we’ve double-guarded these premises with special men who are watching every stranger who comes in to-day; we’ve taken every precaution—or thought we had. That’s why Sencort was so sure nothing could happen.”
He stepped nearer to the window and I realized that he was not standing there merely to think, but he was intentionally showing himself to convince any watcher that the room was occupied. He turned about and went on, “No one knows where the other ends of these pipes are now; of course they haven’t been used for decades. They might stop anywhere or they might have been led on indefinitely. If what killed Costrelman came through the air—and it seems certain it did—and if those pipes are conveyors for more of it, they could have pumped it in and nobody suspected till somebody fell over; it might be coming now on us. Do you feel any movement of air from that pipe?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said.
“Come out now,” said Teverson, pulling at me absolutely unnecessarily; he didn’t have to put up any argument. “I may be a damn fool, as Sencort suggests, but then I’ve rather a longer life expectancy—away from slotted gas pipes—than he. Besides, I’m beginning to feel some of this is personal against me. I was invited to Costrelman’s dinner and was expected, though I didn’t get there.... Weston, get help at once and try to cover the places where these pipes may run to; they may be entirely outside the building, of course. Jump! Reed, post men here to see no one uses this room or room next to it to-day. Leave the electric lights burning as if the room was being used and send some one, on the run, to that animal store the other side of Broadway in a cellar, Thames Street, I think, and buy four or five guinea pigs; if he gets back with them in fifteen minutes, cover your head, hold your breath, and put them inside this door; close it. If he doesn’t get back that soon, don’t even go near the door. Wait here, Fanneal.” He left me in an office near by and himself rushed away.
“Now you tell me,” he went at me three minutes later, “how much you know about this?”