"Queer. There's not a sound."
His hand stole to the handle, clasped it, turned it. Noiselessly the door opened upon darkness into which he slipped equally noiseless.
That slow opening was so surprising, so dreamlike in its quality of the totally unexpected, that George stood rooted. He stared at the square of the door, waiting for voices, clamor, the anticipated in some form. Then he saw the darkness pierced by the white ray of an electric torch and heard a sound—a rumbled oath from O'Malley. It brought him to the threshold. In the middle of the room, his torch sending its shaft over walls and floor, stood the detective alone, his face, the light shining upward on the chin and the tip of his nose, grotesque in its enraged dismay.
"Not here—d——n them!" and his voice trailed off into furious curses.
"Gone?" The surprise had made George forgetful.
"Gone—no!" The man almost shouted in his anger. "How could they go?—Didn't I say every outlet was blocked. They ain't been here. They ain't had her here. Get a match, light the gas—I got to see the place anyway."
The torch's ray had touched a gas fixture on the wall and hung steady there. As the men fumbled for matches, the janitor came clumping across the hall, calling in querulous protest:
"Say—how'd you get in there? That ain't the place—it's rented."
His face was ludicrous in its enraged enmity