“Dawn being interpreted nine thirty, we will,” answered Dorothy laughing.
The next morning found us bowling along towards our destination, discussing meanwhile the method of attack. “Leave it to inspiration,” I said, as we drew up at the door. “Let me play a lone hand on this.”
Luck was with me. There was a sign of “Lodgings” in the window. Leaping out I walked up the steps and rang the bell, while the cab went on down the street. The maid who opened the door was trimmer than I had expected to find. The mistress of the lodging house, when she appeared, though a perfect mountain of flesh, gave signs of a very considerable intelligence. “Yes, there were lodgings. A second and fourth floor front.” Up the stairs panted and wheezed the stout landlady, while I followed in her train. On the fourth floor we halted and entered the small hall bedroom at the top of the stairs. I threw the window open and leaned out, and looked up and down the street.
“Bad thing if a shutter fell from here,” I said. “Wasn’t it in one of the houses near this that the shutter fell and injured a laborer a couple of months ago?”
The landlady seized my lead instantly. “It was the right hand shutter,” she said, “in the very window you’re looking out of now.”
I bent eagerly to look at the hinges. They were brand new, while those on the other side were strained and worn through years of exposure to wind and sun and rain.
“You don’t say,” I replied. “Most interesting. I suppose the hinges rusted and broke.”
“No,” said the landlady, “that was one of the queerest things about it. After the whole thing was over, and I came to look at the place where the shutter fell, there was no trace of a hinge. It must have pulled right out of the brick, and when I went next day to look at the shutters in the kitchen, the hinges, screws, and everything were gone, and I never saw the least trace of them from that day to this. We had the new shutter put up a week later.”
“What luck!” I thought to myself, as I looked around over the adjoining housetops. “Hit it first time trying. Somewhere, behind those roofs, lies the laboratory of the man who is trying to stop all war.” I parted with the landlady, promising an early decision, and went in search of Tom and Dorothy.
They left the carriage as I approached and hurried towards me. “The iron of the shutter disappeared,” I said significantly.